Vista View Saber 2020

Home theater PC enthusiasts are a fickle bunch, and many off-the-shelf products from name-brand TV tuner card manufacturers do not meet the needs of their specific setups. Specialty vendor Vista View has a new card that is a good fit for users who want a high-quality dual analog TV tuner that works with Windows XP Media Center Edition and can fit into a low-profile x1 PCI Express slot. While casual users will be happy with a basic internal card, such as the ATI TV Wonder 650 or an external USB box, such as the Diamond XtremeTV PVR660, the $159 Vista View Saber 2020 offers excellent image quality and a feature set tailored for DVR wonks.

The Vista View Saber 2020 is a low-profile card with two coaxial connections for TV and FM radio and a port for connecting a two-input S-Video breakout cable. The card supports a variety of common TV standards, including NTSC, PAL, and SECAM.

Installing the card was easy using the setup CD, which included basic drivers and a custom DVR application called SaberView. The card also works with Windows Media Center Edition and third-party apps, such as SageTV. While you can use a standard MCE remote if Media Center is your front-end application, the card doesn't include a remote for use with the bundled SaberView DVR application.

SaberView will appear very stripped down to anyone used to Media Center, SageTV, or Beyond TV. There's a lack of hand-holding while setting up your TV signal, and the interface has a sparse Windows Explorer look, unlike the icon-heavy 10-foot interfaces common in other DVR apps. Still, for basic viewing and recording of a TV or FM radio signal, it suffices, and it gives non-MCE users a fully functional DVR setup right out of the box.

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