Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[jake123]

Yup, typical ATI story. When they fix it, will we need like 100 gigs on the hardrive to download a new driver every week? Seems like ATI shot themselves on the foot with this so call "Wonder" card. I guess the wonder is for "wonder if it will ever work". What gets me is that alot of us got jerked around waiting for this. Should have known from my experience with other ATI garbage products. AMD should just make them a cardboard and plastic packaging company, since that's the only thing nice about their product. As for MM, he should be ashamed for all the BS he spewed. But then again, that's why he went into hiding, he knew what was coming and booked. Shame on ATI.

[jonaslasky]

Originally Posted by Octavean

Very interesting,….

A 650 recall or a partial recall, if that’s what this indeed is, would be scandalous (disgraceful and or disreputable) but to keep things in perspective,…”BOOM !!!” at least its not a DELL and no one was blown up in the process.

I think ATI's fumble is even worse. Remember the release of the T 650 is supposed to address all the problems with the T 550. Multimedia Mike was spewing all sorts of grand declarations about how much better the new product was going to be.... then BOOM!... day one and the product is garbage.

There is an implicit understanding in the lithium-Ion battery market that we are all riding a razor's edge. We take the risk because we want higher energy density and short charging times. When I buy a tuner card on the other hand, I expect it to tune TV signals. Even the cheapest TV can do this with zero drama. It's not too much to expect a tuner card card to work similarly. After all the HDTV tuner card I bought for $69.95 with a free stripped-down version of BTV is still working beautifully after a year... and it worked the first time I tried it too!

No ATI has no excuse... especially on a products that is supposed to be the fix... not a first generation.

Jonas

[Octavean]

Originally Posted by jonaslasky

I think ATI's fumble is even worse. Remember the release of the T 650 is supposed to address all the problems with the T 550. Multimedia Mike was spewing all sorts of grand declarations about how much better the new product was going to be.... then BOOM!... day one and the product is garbage.

There is an implicit understanding in the lithium-Ion battery market that we are all riding a razor's edge. We take the risk because we want higher energy density and short charging times. When I buy a tuner card on the other hand, I expect it to tune TV signals. Even the cheapest TV can do this with zero drama. It's not too much to expect a tuner card card to work similarly. After all the HDTV tuner card I bought for $69.95 with a free stripped-down version of BTV is still working beautifully after a year... and it worked the first time I tried it too!

No ATI has no excuse... especially on a products that is supposed to be the fix... not a first generation.

Jonas

Well to each his own then,…

I consider a product that spontaneously combusts, causing physical injury and possibly permanent injury, considerably more serious then a product that simply doesn’t live up to expectations,….like in the T650P debacle.

I mean, I don’t see anyone insisting the removal of T650P products from computers on commercial airlines the way they do for Dell laptop batteries.

There is little doubt that someone somewhere at ATI (and partners) screwed up and screwed up big, its just not a potentially life threatening screw-up.

They are still on the hook though and even if they fix the T650P they may not be able to fix the T650P reputation or theirs for that matter.

***edit***

Oh,..

Wait a second,…

Did you mean that “ ATI's fumble is even worse” with the Theater 650 Pro then the Theater 550 Pro,….!?! Well if that’s the case then, I could see that. The Theater 550 Pro had its problems (and still does) and its launch was handled questionably IMO but the at least basic functionality was there.

With a nonfunctional or unreliable ATSC component the Theater 650 Pro is half broken. One can easily argue that something that is half broken is just plain and simply “broken”.

[dabl]

Originally Posted by Octavean

...dabl, since you are in the market for a PCIe tuner card you might want to consider the dual configurable tuner (NTSC/NTSC, ATSC/ATSC or NTSC/ATSC) and simultaneously functional Vbox 164e . If its not out already it should be soon. There are supposedly some on sale now on ebay.

...

Yep see my post near yours at the below greenbutton discussion about the wonder.

Nah no mpeg encoder is a deal breaker for me as far as using it as an ntsc tuner.

The 650 will be the new king for awhile for analog ntsc I imagine and that's what I'll use it for, until Nvidia makes a dual 650 etc.

Actually I'm thinking more of freeing up my pci slot by swapping my pci audio spdif for usb, going for the 650 pci and using the 164e in my remaining PCI-e slot as two atsc sources, probably a more sensible use of my meager pci bus resources in the machine I'm using for my htpc, an ibm thinkcentre p4 3 ghz, which has a good form factor for the living room but only a single pci and single pci-e slot available. Plenty of usb 2.0 though so it'll probably continue to be useful...

--Don

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/2/1...howThread.aspx

[SpaceCadet]

Let's try to dial down the silliness factor in this thread. First, if the 650 doesn't support the analog and digital tuners concurrently, then that's definitely a major design screwup on ATI's behalf. To the user who bought the 650 only for its S-Video input, and the other members oohing and aahing over it, that's just senseless. Any POS capture board will give you decent image quality via S-Video. Why pay the bucks for a 650 and its analog tuner, 3-D comb filter, and ATSC tuner, only to use none of them? The only thing that you could possibly be getting might perhaps be a better MPEG-2 encoder (and I don't know whether it is any better than the others), if you're even using that. To the people getting all bent out of shape because there's probably a manufacturing defect in the initial batch of 650's--get over it. While this indicates poor quality control, it's hardly a novel situation; manufacturers often screw up when they're trying to rush a product out of the door. ATI will remedy this rapidly. Just exchange your defective boards, if you bought any. It's also possible that the ATSC problems are just due to poor tuner sensitivity, not a manufacturing defect, and that the 650 simply needs a much stronger signal than most other ATSC tuners (this would be a design defect and would be the worst case). If ATI's drivers simply failed to configure the hardware properly, that would be the best case because it could be easily fixed. Before this problem appeared, I had tried to buy a couple of 650's at Best Buy to replace my dual-tuner Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500, with its horrible comb filters, but their computer system would not take the 30% off coupons on the 650's, and a store manager was unable to override the system. As for the VBox 164e, I think it's useless because it uses software MPEG-2 encoding for the analog sources, and they don't even give you a software encoder, only a 30-day trial.

[Seraphic-]

SpaceCadet, my last capture card was a good four years old and it's max was 640x480. Picked up the 650 for 720x480 as well as it's 12-bit video pipeline.

Anyway, the 30% off at BestBuy should have worked. The store manager did a quick okay and I got the 650 for $98 with tax ($140 w/o).

[jonaslasky]

Originally Posted by SpaceCadet

Let's try to dial down the silliness factor in this thread. First, if the 650 doesn't support the analog and digital tuners concurrently, then that's definitely a major design screwup on ATI's behalf.

Hey is that you Spacedead re-incarnated?

Anyway I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't use the NTSC and the ATSC tuners concurrently. There are a few other tuner cards on the market that work just like that, so ATI wouldn't be the first.... and I'm talking about top shelf products.

As for USB tuner boards... there are a few good ones out there with HDTV and at least one with hardware DivX encoding (which is pretty neat) so if you have no PCI slots left, those would be the way to go. You would only need the NTSC tuner for cable channels that are still broadcast in analog. Most network programming come in HDTV now... which is a whole lot better.

Jonas

[spacded]

Originally Posted by jonaslasky

Hey is that you Spacedead re-incarnated?

Actually its MR SPACDED to you !! and NO its not!

I love watching you guys get riled up over a PCTV card though!

im looking forward to the 650 pro when it comes out here
hopefully it will be even better than my 550 pro in MCE

[SHSPVR]

You know people this could actually may not be design screwup on ATI's behalf it could be a PCB manufacturer screwup like a bad batch of parts wrong batch of parts or one of small parts got put on backwards or wrong cad file got load and still got pass manufacturer testing and just so you know ATI not first manufacturer that had this happing, so the only thing we can hope for is that ATI come clean on what happing but know ATI they may not say anything.

[jake123]

Excuse us "Mr. Spacded", but don't come here and diminish the frustration of those who went out and bought the damn 650, only to find out that the great expectation on this card failed and failed miserably. Not everybody here has a bestbuy across the street, nor do they enjoy going through hours of trying to make it work and the multiple trips back to bestbuy.

If you "love" seeing us get riled over a PCTV card, then you missed the whole point of the numerous discussions here. I'm sure if you experience the frustration of those who had to go through this nonsense, your attitude would be a lot different. I'm sure that at some point or another, you either bought or ordered something that was not what you ordered or met your expectations. I'm also sure you were not dancing and celebrating when that happened. As for the "silliness factor", a little humor makes it a little less frustrating.

Your attitude, "Mr. Spacded to you", speaks volumes of your insecurity and "professed" knowledge. You are indeed a legend in your mind.

[dabl]

Originally Posted by SpaceCadet

...if the 650 doesn't support the analog and digital tuners concurrently, then that's definitely a major design screwup on ATI's behalf...

If you'd actually read the thread before posting, you'd know that Mike confirmed a good while back that the 650 design wasn't meant to provide simultaneous use of each tuner.

IMHO arguing whether this is a design flaw isn't a very interesting discussion but the question Octaven raised early on of exactly how the driver and higher level applications such as Media Center and BeyondTV will handle potential scheduling conflicts between attempts at simultaneous use of the tuners is, and to date hasn't been answered.

[jonaslasky]

Originally Posted by dabl

If you'd actually read the thread before posting, you'd know that Mike confirmed a good while back that the 650 design wasn't meant to provide simultaneous use of each tuner.

IMHO arguing whether this is a design flaw isn't a very interesting discussion but the question Octaven raised early on of exactly how the driver and higher level applications such as Media Center and BeyondTV will handle potential scheduling conflicts between attempts at simultaneous use of the tuners is, and to date hasn't been answered.

Don't take SpaceCadet/Spaceded (yeah I think they're one and the same) seriously. Let's all have an understanding that these characters are jokers and should be ignored.... or taken with contemptive humor they deserve. The dude's good for a few laughs though. Arguing with them would be a supreme waste of time.


Jonas

[thatdude90210]

I don't think it's the same guy. It would be too stupid to use a similar name to pretend to be someone else. I don't think anyone's that stupid, but then I've only been on the internet for a dozen years.

Anyway, I think the current 650 might have a ATSC tuner sensitivity problem. Someone at avsforum (link) got all their channels by adding an amplifier to his antenna.

My interest in the 650 is for NTSC only so I'm more interested in hearing about the quality for that.

[SpaceCadet]

Originally Posted by dabl

If you'd actually read the thread before posting, you'd know that Mike confirmed a good while back that the 650 design wasn't meant to provide simultaneous use of each tuner.

IMHO arguing whether this is a design flaw isn't a very interesting discussion but the question Octaven raised early on of exactly how the driver and higher level applications such as Media Center and BeyondTV will handle potential scheduling conflicts between attempts at simultaneous use of the tuners is, and to date hasn't been answered.

Yes, I have read and followed the thread. I'm well aware of what Multimedia Mike said, and the unanswered responses. It doesn't change the fact that ATI claimed to be working with Microsoft and should have known exactly what MCE expected and what most analog + digital tuner boards deliver. I'm not "arguing" anything. Not allowing concurrent use of the analog and digital tuners was a stupid and unnecessary design decision, and yes, we're stuck with the result if we buy one of these cards.

Originally Posted by jonaslasky

Don't take SpaceCadet/Spaceded (yeah I think they're one and the same) seriously. Let's all have an understanding that these characters are jokers and should be ignored.... or taken with contemptive humor they deserve.

I'm not spacded, I don't know spacded, and anyone is free to ignore what I post. However, I don't appreciate personal attacks and it's not your place to tell other forum members how they should regard me.

[SpaceCadet]

Originally Posted by thatdude90210

Someone at avsforum...got all their channels by adding an amplifier to his antenna.

As of the time of this post, the only comments along those lines are from thoth, and he specifically stated in both posts that he got most, but not all, of his OTA digital channels using two different amplified antennae.

[hrlslcbr]

Originally Posted by Octavean

”BOOM !!!” at least its not a DELL and no one was blown up in the process.

Not allowing concurrent use of the analog and digital tuners was a stupid and unnecessary design decision, and yes, we're stuck with the result if we buy one of these cards

To be able to capture both NTSC and ATSC channels, you'd need 2 theatre 650 pro chips on one card. It's not an unnecessary decision; if you don't like the card's features you're free to buy anything else. MM already explained that such a feature was not going to be available for these cards, so there's no point in saying that many other cards from other brands can do it. THAT is unnecessary.

We could at least wait for ATI to explain what has happened to the cards; if it's just a driver problem, or if the first batch of cards were defective, etc. If they never answer any question, then we'll know that the cards are crap and everyone should avoid buying one. It's as simple as that.