Software

PowerCinema 3.0 is the heart and soul of the package and does everything from displaying TV channels, to playing back DVDs to even burning recorded content to DVD. The interface is similar to Windows Media Center, right down to the colours. We're not the first site to realize this, but we found the software a bit sluggish (this is in a Pentium 4 560 system with a gig of ram) in Windows XP 32-bit. No idea if this performance is similar in Linux as no out of the box for the penguin is offered.

We mentioned Windows MCE earlier for a reason... if you decide to forego the PowerCinema 3.0 package, the MSI Theater 550PRO is supported by Windows MCE. Now, while the card itself is supported, the remote is not and you'll need to spring for a MCE compatible remote control.

Image Quality

Image quality on the MSI Theater 550PRO is very good, but not without some caveats. As you can see from the screenshots below, the quality will be dependent on the source video cable used to input video into the TV tuner.

COAX	COMPOSITE	S-VIDEO

COAX will provide the poorest video quality, though it is still very watchable for most standard television or video viewing. Moving to composite video where the video stream has it's own video cable and separate left and right video channels will provide a cleaner image plus better audio. S-Video requires its own audio cables, but the extra wiring present for each colour will provide the best quality outside of HD compatible cabling.

Compared to the Theater 200 (found in all current AIW cards), we saw little difference between the two. The colours are slightly brighter on the Theater 550, but they don't seem any crisper. On a computer monitor, we did detect more background noise than we normally would on a CRT based TV. Furthermore, depending on the compression used by your TV provider, image quality can be uneven as you move from channel to channel. This is not the fault of the card though as there's not much MSI or ATI can do about that.

Final Words

MSI has done a good job at taking a proven product from ATI and implementing it into their own package. While for all intent and purposes, not much has changed, that's a good thing. The TV Wonder Elite was already a solid product, but as we'll get to at the end of this review, MSI does one up ATI in one important area.

The software bundle is decent, albeit unspectacular. You can do everything you need the card to do with the PowerCinema software, though we do feel the interface is a bit pokey. Unfortunently, Gemstar's TV Guide is nowhere to be found, which is a bit of a letdown for cable TV viewers. This issue is moot though if you plan on using the breakout box to stream video from your television receiver (likely the case with satellite TV viewers).

Hardware-wise, the MSI Theater 550PRO leaves little to be desired. There are multiple video sources, covering TV to camcorders, as well as a decent FM tuner. The signal strength was decent, on par with our home theater receiver. Video playback was very good, though the quality will be hinging on what input you use.

The only real criticism true A/V fans may have are the lack of HD features, but that is not where MSI is targeting the Theater 550PRO. ATI offers a HD ready product, but given that less than 10% of available channels in a typical subscription is actually HD (and even less when you consider not every program has a HD feed), this is not a big loss unless you live and die with HD programming.

Pros: Good image quality, especially with S-Video. Decent bundle overall, and well priced.

Cons: No program guide included.

Bottom Line: For the cool price of $74 USD, the MSI Theater 550PRO is a pretty good value when compared to many other TV Tuners, including ATI's own TV Wonder Elite which goes for almost double the price. Considering there isn't much difference between the two in terms of software bundles and hardware, we'd lean towards MSI's version of the card if you're in the need of a tuner for your HTPC box.