Just when you thought that digital set top boxes were going to take over, COMPRO introduces a new PCI Tuner card called the M800 that offers up some very impressive features.

First off, they incorporate an NEC Chipset (D64083) for the 3D Y/C separation and noise reduction. This is the same chip found in expensive, high-end television sets giving the card a jump ahead in picture quality over competitors. Second, they are the only company to give users the capability to shut down their PC’s after a recording, or power up in time to record along with your recording schedule.

This feature called Power Up Scheduling truly makes your home theatre PC into a real consumer electronic device that turns off and on with a remote, and responds like a regular PVR by taking advantage of suspend to hard disk functionality of modern PC’s (aka: ACPI:S5 Soft Off). Record quality is DVD-quality using MPEG-2.

Now as along as TV stays analog for a while longer, this product might prove very useful. For more information, check out COMPRO’s website.