Just Like TV, But Better As TV
Compro is a Taiwanese manufacturer specialized in TV PCI tuner cards and external TV tuner boxes. The Videomate TV Gold Plus, Compro’s latest internal PCI TV tuner cards, guarantees a clear and clean vision and offers advanced functions allowing you to enjoy the very best of your TV programs. Additionally, Compro’s product also works as a radio tuner as well as an advanced video recorder
Test Configuration
We tested the Videomate TV Gold Plus on the following configuration :
| Test System | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz |
| Motherboard | Abit IC7 |
| Graphics Card | Sapphire Ati Radeon 9800 PRO Ultimate Edition 256 MB |
| RAM | 2 x 256 MB Corsair |
| Hard Disk | Western Digital SATA 250 GB |
| OS | Windows XP Professional |
The card is certified to work with NTSC, PAL and SECAM TV formats (we tested with NTSC). For the test, we connected the card to three different terrestrial antenna systems in three different households. Under these different conditions we got homogenous picture-quality results.
Some Considerations
This product requires an existing, already-installed AGP or PCI video card. A single card solution, such as the ATi All-In-Wonder or the NVIDIA Personal Cinema lines, takes less space and can be installed in any case with an AGP slot, which most PCs have. While Compro’s PCI TV tuner card solution requires an additional PCI slot, which could be a problem with a barebone system, it still enables you to upgrade your graphics card independently from the TV tuner at a later time.