Package Contents

The nVidia DualTV MCE comes in a shrinkwrapped retail box.  As you can see below, the green sleeve has all the printed information, and the actual packaging is the black corrugated box with the nVidia logo.

Inside the well-packed box is an orgy of electronics, cables, CDs, and manuals.  In this package, we received the following:

• Remote Control

• Remote Control Receiver with USB cable

• 2x AA batteries

• DualTV MCE Installation CD - Activation code is printed on CD sleeve, so don't lose this!

• MyDVD v6 CD

• Remote Control Quick Start Guide

• DualTV MCE Quick Start Guide

• 75 ohm Coaxial Antenna Cable

• 2x wired IR emitters

• T-style FM dipole antenna

• S-Video cable

• 900MHz 2-way coaxial splitter

• Stereo Audio + Composite Video RCA male/male patch cable

• 3.5mm stereo plug to 2x RCA female stereo audio adapter cable

• S-Video to composite video adapter

• DualTV MCE PCI card

Here are some shots of the DualTV MCE PCI card:

Two Philips cable tuners are present on board, as shown by the two shield cans.

At the heart of the DualTV MCE is the ViXS XCode II ASIC.  Its features are as follows, as stated on their website:

The XCode II is a very capable ASIC, specifically designed for multiple, simultaneous A/V streams. 

The backside of the DualTV MCE shows the ICs needed for each tuner section, and two memory chips. 

Below is the upper right corner of the card.  There are four connectors here, two audio, two video, all of which are not documented in the Quick Start Guide or User Manual.  The Video connector shows five pins, while the audio connectors have the typical four-pin CD-ROM style appearance.  We assume these to be wired directly to both A/V inputs, just like how sound cards have internal and external line-in connectors.  These connectors, for most applications, are useless.

Here are the external connectors, the ones nearly all of us will be using.  From left to right, FM, CATV, SVID1, AUD1, SVID2, AUD2.