Asus My Cinema-PE9400 Combo TV Tuner Card

When I first started playing around with computers you bought everything from a different company. If you wanted a mainboard, you bought from one, if you wanted a sound card, you bought from another. Now it seems like you can buy a complete system from a single vendor. Asus is this type of vendor, they make just about everything (I am waiting for the day I can grab up and Asus SUV). In fact one of my goals is to test out a system composed entirely from Asus parts (with the exception of CPU, HDD and RAM). But until that time I will happily take a look at the new products Asus sends our way. Today I have something for the HTPC enthusiast the My Cinema-PE9400 Combo TV tuner. This has just been released and looks to be another hit as Asus works on cornering the entire component market.

Product: Asus My Cinema-PE9400 Combo TV Tuner     
Author: Sean Kalinich
Reviewed on: August 1st 2008
Product cost: $79.00 (MSRP)
Manufacturer: Asus
Spelling and Grammatical editor: Planetx64 Staff

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Packaging and Accessories:
The My Cinema-PE9400 Combo ships in a white and green box. The box is covered with the usual claims about how wonderful the product is as well as listing the contents and specifications.

Once you have marveled at the artistic look of the PE9400’s outer shell and finally opened the box up you will find that Asus has packed quite a lot of loot in there. The PE9400 comes as a complete HTPC kit. Included are a Media Center remote, IR sensor with two control cables (for a set top box), audio and video adapter cables, and an external antenna TV and FM antenna. This is pretty much everything you would need to turn your desktop into an HTPC. The software included is the Total Media suite this is a nice piece of software weather you are using XP or Vista.

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Features:
The PE9400 is a combo TV tuner, this means it is capable of receiving Digital and Analog TV signals.
This gives you the option of watching HD “over-the-air” broadcasts straight from the card. The card truly has two separate tuners giving you the flexibility to view HD programming from Digital or Analog over-the-air broadcasts at the same time.  You can switch back and forth between the two and even record from one while watching the other. These two can be watched in two modes, PIP (Picture in Picture) and PBP (Picture Beside Picture).
Additional features include an FM tuner, an electronic noise reduction feature PCI-e x1 connectivity, hardware Mpeg2 encoding, Burning recorded video to DVD or VCD, home security camera connectivity (with Asus VideoSecurity Online Technology), and low profile design to allow the PE9400 to be installed in a slim HTPC case.

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Performance:
How do you really measure the performance of a TV tuner? There are no real benchmarks to be had. No tests that you can run. It is all subjective and relies on the viewer to determine how well it reproduces the image on your screen. Along these lines performance can also be measured by ease of installation and use. A TV tuner can be said to perform poorly if it takes you an hour to figure out how to record a TV show.  With this in mind I will dive into the performance of the My Cinema-PE9400 Combo.

Installation and setup:
The My Cenima-PE9400 Combo was extremely easy to install and setup. It was a matter of plug the card into an available PCI-e slot, install the drivers (the setup application works for XP and Vista (both x86 and x64) then either install the included TotalMedia 3.5 software or use media center if you are running Vista.  The installer application also installs the IR sensor for the remote.  I was very happy with how simple the install went.
Configuration of TotalMedia was also a snap.

Picture was smooth until I activated PiP this slowed the main picture down quite a bit and in some cases caused a stutter.  The built in hardware encoder made the “time shift” (DVR) function work very smoothly when using Vista’s Media Center.
In Media Center the picture playback and sound were excellent and you were still able to make use of both Tuners, at one point I had my Digital Smart box plugged in as well as just the standard cable allowing me to record the “un-locked” channels while watching the upper ones. I also had no problems running the PE9400 with both Digital Cable and ASTC HD content. Sound reproduction was good although I did use a bypass for HD audio when using my Smart Box to get the full 7.1 surround from HD TV.

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Price/Warranty:
The MSRP on the My Cinema-PE9400 Combo is a very slim $79.00, combine that with a hefty three-year warranty and the PE9400 comes out on top in the Value category. There are very few cards that have the specifications the PE9400 has with anything near this price tag.

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Conclusion:
TV playback was outstanding on the My Cinema-PE9400 Combo and the second Tuner was a huge plus when dealing with the some digital smart box issues. DVR recording was so-so using the bundled TotalMedia 3.5 package yet while running Vista’s Media Center this function was flawless. The PE9400 Combo is a must have for any HTPC builder. I would recommend it for new builds and to replace just about any existing TV tuner. 

For its outstanding value and performance we are happy to award the Asus My Cinema-PE9400 our "Best on the Planet" award.

Thanks to Eric Chen at Asus for his help in getting this evaluation put together.