Introduction

There’s a digital transition underway where TV is concerned, and another digital divide may be looming in the years ahead. Since July 1, 2006, FCC regulations have required all new TV sets with a 25" diagonal display or bigger sold in the US to include a digital ATSC tuner for digital broadcasts, including those that support HDTV. (ATSC stands for Advanced Television Systems Committee, a US-based group that developed a digital television standard for the US, now also adopted in Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and Honduras.). In 2007, that requirement applies to any TV sets 13" or bigger. On February 17, 2009, possible postponements notwithstanding, the FCC is mandating a nationwide switch-off of all analog TV broadcasts. The ATSC tuner requirement is intended to prevent anybody whose bought a TV set relatively recently from being affected by this change, which applies only to those who get their TV signals over the air. Cable and satellite subscribers won’t be affected, because they use the tuner in their set top box (or CableCard devices) anyway.

As it happens, the ATSC digital signal handling requirement also has interesting implications for media PCs. For one thing, it explains why Intel’s Digital Home Theater Capabilities Assessment Tool (DHCAT) is best satisfied when test systems include both NTSC (the older analog TV standard) and ATSC support. For another, the looming takeover of ATSC also helps to explain why so many new TV capture cards are so-called combo models that include two tuners, one for NTSC the other for ATSC.

The subject of this week’s review is a brand-new instance of this emerging class of hardware devices : AVerMedia’s AVerTV Combo PCIe M780 card.

Despite including two tuners, the M780 is incredibly small.

The normal circuit board for the M780 is small enough that the vendor includes a low profile bracket with the product so that you can swap it out for the full-height model that comes attached by default. This is as simple as unscrewing a couple of small Philips-head machine screws on the bigger version, and then replacing it with the smaller bracket, secured with those same screws.

The low profile bracket is a must for narrow-profile HTPC cases

This is a great boon to those with narrow-profile HTPC cases, who in the past have often had to buy special (and sometimes costlier) versions of full-height cards.