My new Terratec Cinergy 600 TV card

Since my ATI AiW was coming with a TV tuner , I had many years to use a TV card . After the removal of this favorite but old card from my PC , it was time to search again for such a card .

So I searched for a TV-FM card w remote control . I chose Terratec Cinergy 600 . It was more expensive than some competitive cards (like PixelView's series) but it was coming with RDS , Stereo TV , and had nice magazine reviews .

- TV Tuner .

Plus:

- Video Quality is as good as expected (for such good name / priced card ) . Clear & bright image rewards your decision to chose this card .

- Stereo sound (even on TV signal) .

Minus:

- The card beyond 352x288 works only through YUV9 . It doesn't affect much the quality , but some applications does not support YUV9 (they suppose YUY2 or similar) so they cannot work with this card .

- This is a big disadvantage: If the card capture beyond 352x288 , it cannot preview the video while recording . Only Terratec's TV application can preview at such resolution but: 1) when it does that it degrades the preview down to 352x288 . 2) Loses frames even in 640x480 (in a PC that works @ 30% CPU load with using other applications w/o preview) so it cannot be used for that work . 

iuVcr supports a "Smart Tee for Preview" features which actually enables Preview at higher resolutions but conserves double CPU load and makes the application more vulnerable to async problems . Trying to learn about that , iuVCR reports that this is a standard problem on many PCI TV-FM cards coming with Btxxx / SAA7xxx chips today . But this is a big minus against graphics cards that includes TV tuner . All ATI All in Wonder cards (as much as I know them from 1998) did not had such problems and closes 5 years of existence !.

- FM receiver

Plus:

- Nice Hi-Fi sound , Stereo separation .

- RDS , Signal meter can't be easily found on other cards .

Minus:

- Sensitivity wasn't as expected , compared with simpler and cheaper FM cards (like a Media Forte SF64-pcr I own) .

- The chip is Phillips SAA7134 which means that there was NO radio program other than the Terratec's Active Radio (at least at the time I've bought it) . Active Radio was good but just that . Could not save mp3 , does not have smart GUI or shortcuts . After a few months and helping Andrey to develop more his cool program , finally Fairy Radio 1.76 supported my card !.

- Even the cheapest cards comes with a simple antenna dipole . Cinergy did not included anything similar , nevertheless FM socket was too close with the PC case and it was difficult to find an appropriate antenna jack .

- Remote Control

Plus:

- The included application works pretty well . It's pre-configurable to work with some other famous application , and can be configured to work with your favorite ones .

Minus:

- Cannot switch to a bigger station number than 10 . That's no problem if the Radio / TV application handles such cases ( Active Radio divides the hole Station List to "Banks" where each one includes 10 stations ) .

- Conclusion

Weighting Plus & Minus you can see that Cinergy is a quality card with excellent audio / video output but loses the battle due to: 1) Half priced competitors 2) Video preview disadvantage . 

Finally I dismounted it from my PC . I use a cool FM card (MediaForte SF64-pcr) plus my GeForceMX graphics card w Video In (taking TV signals from a standard VHS VCR video) . I didn't paid less money (graphics card w Video-In costs 50 euros more that the standard ones + 30 euros for the FM card) , I don't have TV tuner (only Video-In) and I don't have a remote , but I DON'T have ANY of the above mentioned disadvantages . Haven't the courage , the curiosity and the money to buy another competitive card to discover similar disadvantages !.

Regards
Michael