Testing

CPU Utilization

Our first test is CPU utilization. Even though you will see that even for our somewhat outdated home theater PC, utilization percentage is almost insignificant. However, we need to test this because you can see a clear difference between the two tuners.

Watching:

As you can see, the CPU utilization while watching TV on the system with the Theater 550 Pro card (left) was 19% on average. However, when the 650 Pro card was installed (right), the CPU utilization while watching fell to 13% on average. The change was not noticed, but it definitely shows. Notice however than when the 650 Pro card was installed, the amount of processes went up by 3 and the page file usage went up 26MB from 283MB to 309MB.



Watching and Recording:


When recording the CPU utilization naturally went up on both cards about the same amount. The CPU utilization on the configuration with the Theater 550 Pro card (left) was higher at 21% than the 16% utilization of the configuration with ATI’s 650 Pro tuner (right). The page file usage was up 27MB when ATI’s Theater 650 Pro tuner was installed. Again, the difference is not noticeable unless you open up task manager and have a look at the numbers. This low CPU usage is all due to the hardware decoding and encoding of the Theater chips and the onboard buffer memory. Older TV tuners sometimes forced the CPU to do all the work, which often resulted in 100% CPU utilization on slower CPUs.

Image Quality

This is the second and much more important test. This is why consumers buy TV tuners and how they differentiate one from another. ATI’s Theater 550 Pro tuner was already widely considered to have the best picture quality on the market. So how much of an improvement is the Theater 650 Pro? Take a look.

The reason we used a cartoon for testing is because colors do not change from show to show, unlike all TV programs. Cartoons will show color imperfections and the smoothness of edges better as well.

You should really clock on the thumbnails to see the full size snapshot to compare the differences (or lack thereof) better. The main difference between the two pictures is quality. Everything is smoother with the Theater 650. There are no imperfections in the picture, no lines or distortions. In the Theater 550 Pro’s snapshot there are a couple of distorted lines arranged horizontally across the screen. The girl’s orange hair is orange throughout in the Theater 650’s image. The 550 Pro’s image shows some red, light orange and other colors in the girl’s hair. The Theater 550’s colors are not as uniform as those of the Theater 650.


Here are two more examples of images from each tuner. The Theater 550 Pro’s images (left) are slightly distorted. It has difficulty displaying one (or several very similar shades) over a large area of the screen. The night sky in the back and the girl’s hair show irregularity. All colors are smooth and the edges are round in the Theater 650’s image. Colors are also slightly brighter with the Theater 650 Pro.