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Diamond Multimedia XtremeTV PVR-550RC “Power Pack” Review
Reviewed by: Erik Pettersen
On: 7/19/2005
The Diamond MultimediaXtremeTV PVR-550 “Power Pack” is an intriguing new entry into the DIY PVR marketplace. For $130 they manage to package nearly everything you would need (sans PC) to make your PC into a PVR / Media Center.
The PVR550 Power Pack comes with:
• Conexant “Falcon” hardware MPEG encoding tuner card
• FireFly RF remote control & batteries
• BeyondTV Subscriber Edition
• Beyond Media (full)
• Misc A/V cables
There were a bunch of other small touches, like the inclusion of the commonly used A/V cables that will invariable save most people from a late night trip to Radio Shack. Nothing is worse than being a stereo mini-jack to RCA adapter away from completing your PVR project, and thankfully, one was included.
Installation:
Installation was straightforward. Pop open your case, slide in the PVR550 PCI card into a free PCI slot on your motherboard, tighten the backplane screw, and close the case. The FireFly remote instructions make it abundantly clear that under no circumstances should you plug the USB RF receiver in until prompted to do so by the driver software (i.e. install the software before pluging the USB receiver in).
The only confusing part of the install was that the FireFly driver/install was on a separate CD, so it did not seem as smooth as an install flow as it could be. I assume they use the same install CD for the non-power pack XtremeTV users, which would have no use for the FireFly driver install. I’m nitpicking a little here, but I’d like to see the drivers on the same CD and perhaps different install branches to make it a little clearer / automagic.
