Introduction

I'll be the first to admit, I don't know everything there is to know about TV and video capture cards. As a very satisfied TiVo user, up until recently I didn't really see the point of building a dedicated computer to handle what TiVo does so well. But that opinion is starting to change. First and foremost, as with happens with many companies that have become very successful, very fast, TiVo has become more expensive to use. The "Lifetime" service contract is no longer offered by TiVo and you're stuck paying a monthly fee if you purchase from the current product line. While many of the TiVo boxes are now free or offered at a greatly reduced price, the HD model is $800 bucks. In most cases you'd be better off paying a monthly fee to your cable company for a HD DVR. It all seems a bit well ...greedy and short sighted if they can't see the writing on the wall.

The big advantage I see with a HTPC over set-top DVR's is the ability to upgrade easily. When my Series 2 TiVo (with a lifetime service contract) recently started acting up, I was forced to replace the hard drive. Something I would not suggest for the novice computer user. But eventually my trusty Series 2 is going to go completely belly up and my lifetime service contract will go with it. I needed options and considering the rate at which I upgrade my computer, building a HTPC with last years parts was a very attractive option. Cruising the SnapStream (BeyondTV) web site, I noticed a HD capture card in one of their bundles and decided to contact the maker directly. I talked to a very nice woman by the name of Carol Wong and a short time later I had a Dvico FusionHTDV5 Gold Plus TV Capture Card delivered to my door.

Dvico doesn't have quite the same recognition of say Hauppage, but neither brands are exactly household names. Dvico was founded in 1998. And in 2002 Dvico introduced the very first software based HDTV card. Dvico is also the parent company of TViX, a maker of stand alone multimedia devices. With many awards to their credit and partnerships with industry leaders such as BeyondTV, make no mistake Dvico is a serious player.

Specs from Dvico

The FusionHDTV 5 RT Gold is the latest in Dvico's line of FusionHDTV cards. The card is feature rich and comes with most everything you'll need to get up and running. It allows you to receive both HDTV and analog broadcasts directly to your PC without the need for a tuner box. The cards have been very popular with HTPC builders for several reasons, not the least of which is the modest price. The Fusion cards also offer the end-user a great deal of capability for the price.

One of the reasons for the low price is the lack of a hardware encoder/decoder to handle HDTV signals, instead the RT uses a software solution. While this isn't the best solution performance wise as this is going to put a lot more load on your PC, the RT uses a nifty little trick to increase performance and lighten the load on the CPU. As long as your video card is DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) capable, Dvico incorporates a way to shift the load from the CPU to the video card. If however, your video card isn't DXVA compatible, the minimum system requirement needed to run the card goes up dramatically.

System Requirements

Package

Considering the FusionHDTV5 RT Gold shipped from Korea, it arrived very quickly. Shipped on the 31st of October it landed at my door on November 3rd. I've had things shipped from the next state over that took longer. The package was a little worse for wear, but the retail package was unharmed other than a few scuff marks. The lack of peanuts or other packing material didn't seem to cause any problems, the retail package contains a vacu-formed plastic packing container that kept the card and accessories safe. Kind of like Tupperware for computer parts.