TerraTec Launches Cinergy PCI Satellite TV Tuners
The new Cinergy S PCI and Cinergy S2 PCI HD from TerraTec are a great match to the SelfSat HD-compatible antenna we saw in July.
Both devices are PCI so at the moment Laptops are out of the picture, but they are a perfect addition to your home theatre PC and, as its name suggests, the Cinergy S2 PCI HD (pictured) supports HD broadcasts making it the obvious choice.
The Cinergy S PCI receives hundreds of world-wide TV channels and radio stations in DVB-S standard which you can record, edit and burn in high quality MPEG 2. Recordings can be timed or even programmed remotely via the internet. Cinergy S PCI will even wake a computer up from standby or sleep to begin recording at a pre-set time.
With the TerraTec Home Cinema software you gain automatic aspect ratio optimisation, picture-in-picture (presumably so you can watch a recorded program alongside a live one or check live TV whilst watching a recording unless you have multiple tuners), Dolby digital (AC3) recording, teletext/subtitles, user-defined favourites, multi-tuner support and, perhaps the most drool inducing feature for those of us used to Sky+, a commercial editor which makes it easy to remove blocks of commercial breaks.
If that wasn’t enough, the Cinergy S PCI is also equipped with a input for analogue video signals (S-Video, composite) which you can use to import analogue videos from camcorders and video recorders.
The HD version supports the new DVB-S2 standard in addition to DVB-S broadcasts and lets you record HDTV programmes at full HD resolution in H.264 format. DVB-S is still recorded in MPEG 2/4.
And all this comes in at just £39.99 for the Cinergy S PCI and £59.99 for the Cinergy S2 PCI HD! That means that both together clock in at just under £100 and that’s not bad for a dual tuner recording solution with HD support.
We’ll see about reviewing both alongside the SelfSat HD antenna and let you know how they perform as an addition to your home theatre PC.