mathjax-node tex2svg not rendering LaTeX correctly

I'm running mathjax tex2svg through node on a windows 64 bit system and am trying to render LaTeX .svg files. The exact order of things I've done, including installation, from a "fresh system" is as follows:

# install node with installer
# install miktex 1.2 with installer
$ npm install mathjax
$ npm install mathjax-node-cli
$ tex2svg '\sin\theta=\theta' > test.svg

the last module call executes wihthot error but the resulting test.svg is as follows:

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

It seems like the LaTeX interpreter is not being called, but I'm not sure how to debug this as the pipeline is executing and not throwing errors. I tried assorted backslash tricks (double, quadruple) and adding '$' etc, but the result is the same. I would appreciate any help, thank you.