Diamond XtremeTV PVR-550RC: Not Quite Ready for Prime Time

Capture Quality

We again used SnapStream BeyondTV for captures, after making the previously described configuration changes required to change video source. The image we used was the one originally captured in our Turtle Beach Video Advantage Review . We selected it for motion, color, detail, and lighting, and are using it here to permit easy comparison to previously tested hardware. Wave goodbye to the wife again, Mr. Rivers!

The original image captured directly from DVD to PC

The PVR-550 loses only a tiny bit of detail via S-Video input

A little more detail is lost using Composite input

Diamond's XtremeTV PVR-550 does an excellent job of capturing S-Video. With great dimensional accuracy and very little loss in detail, the quality seen here is exceeded by very few cards. Just as impressive, however, is the minimal loss in quality moving from S-Video to composite video inputs.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.