Many desktops sold with Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system come without a TV tuner and remote control for TiVo-style TV viewing and personal video recording. But even if your Media Center PC has a tuner, Nvidia Corp. says it's got one that's twice as good. The Nvidia DualTV MCE offers two NTSC tuners on a single PCI card, letting users record two TV shows simultaneously or record one while watching another. In addition to pausing and rewinding live or recorded programs, the Nvidia card supports transferring shows to personal media players or streaming them from the PC to game consoles or Media Center Extenders on TV sets elsewhere in the home. Orb Networks software lets users watch TV over the Internet from anywhere in the world.

The $169 tuner ($219 with a remote control) uses the same PureVideo technology as Nvidia's GeForce graphics cards to enable the highest possible picture quality, as well as a 3D comb filter to enhance detail and an inline amplifier with noise-reduction hardware to boost and clean up weak signals. A MediaSqueeze feature records TV shows at a lower bit rate than other tuners to conserve disk space without significant loss in quality.