Now you can watch your favorite TV shows from your computer with the Sapphire HD 5570 Xtend TV. This TV tuner for PC is not like the good old All-in-Wonder TV tuner card. It’s new and improved. The Sapphire HD 5570 XtendTV is a single slot PCI-Express graphics card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory and HDMI and DVI outputs. With this, you can watch any TV programs in the world.
Like any other TV tuner for computer, the HD 5570 Xtend TV will receive and decode all available local free to air signals from TV and radio stations. You can also record and save playback TV programs using Media Center. Although these feature is not new.
That’s not all, with the FlexiStream installed into the PC, XtendTV is able to act as a streaming server and users can watch all of their home TV programs using Xtend TV client on a laptop or remote PC.
Based on FlexiTV and Flexistream technologies from Mirics, the SAPPHIRE XtendTV solution uses the Accelerated Parallel Processing (stream processing) capability of the on-board HD 5570 graphics chip smoothly to decode the TV signals and to compress the stream for viewing over the internet.
But HD 5570 is not just limited to TV tuner functionality only, it also act as a graphics card. XtendTV runs on a GPU with a650 MHz Core Clock and 400 Stream Processors. You can check out the specs and system requirements below.
SAPPHIRE HD 5570
The HD 5570 is a member of the SAPPHIRE HD 5000 series which is supported by AMD’s Catalyst DirectX 11 WHQL certified graphics driver. This generation of hardware delivers support for all of the key Microsoft DirectX 11 level features including DirectCompute 11 instructions, hardware Tessellation and multi-threaded communications with the system CPU. It also supports Accelerated Parallel Processing, accelerating supported applications such as video transcoding and rendering tasks by executing instructions on the GPU architecture rather than the system CPU.Ideal for media applications, all members of the SAPPHIRE HD 5570 series have an on board hardware UVD (Unified Video Decoder) considerably reducing CPU load and delivering smooth decoding of Blu-ray and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, as well as Mpeg files. In the SAPPHIRE HD 5000 series the UVD has been enhanced to be able simultaneously to decode two 1080p HD video streams and to be able to display HD video in high quality with Windows Aero mode enabled. It supports HDMI 1.3a with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
Sapphire HD5570 XtendTV specs:
GPU: 650 MHz Core Clock, 400 x Stream Processors
Output: 1 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x HDMI
Memory: 1024 MB Size, 128 -bit GDDR5, 4000 MHz Effective
Software: Driver CD, SIM HD(Enhance the video quality for IM)-(Full package only), Mirics FlexiStream
Accessory: DVI to VGA Adapter, USB A TYPE TO MINI USB B TYPE – 250MM Cable, Portable UHF/VHF Antenna, Microsoft MCE Remote Control With Receiver(Optional)
Sapphire HD 5570 Xtend TV System Requirements:
- PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard.
- 400 Watt Power Supply is required.
- Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of certified products.
- 1024 MB Minimum of system memory.
- DVD playback requires DVD drive.
- Blu-ray™ / HD DVD playback requires Blu-ray / HD DVD drive.
- Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz processor or equivalent AMD or higher for TV application
- Windows® 7 Home Premium or above Operating System
- Minimum 512MB free hard disk space for video streaming
- To receive digital TV, being in an area covered by DVB-T broadcasting is required
- To stream TV over the internet, minimum 512 kb upload or higher internet connection is required.
- To stream TV to a mobile device, FlexiStream client software supporting the specific device is required
- For best TV reception, it is recommended to connect the tuner to an external, roof mounted antenna
- Sound card and speakers / headphones
What I think about HD 5570 XtendTV:
1. It’s definitely a better TV tuner. (From first impression, although still waiting for decent reviews)
2. If you want a TV tuner and a graphics card at the same time, this would be a solution.
3. If you are a gamer or more into gaming, I would not recommend this to you.
4. Graphics card functionality is not that powerful.
What do you think?
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