Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[hussain]

a

[hussain]

Bill T if you go to the following ati page it is clearly written that:

Worldwide TV
Single chip support for NTSC, PAL and SECAM allows you to watch TV from Australia to Zimbabwe

www.ati.com/products/theater650pro/features.html

Can anyone please see on the box of ati whether pal support is written or not. Also please give me suggestions for tv tuner card with pal support.

[spacded]

The 550 pro came in various versions . ntsc, pal secam etc
why would the 650 pro be any different
and why would he lie about it.

It sucks buts its the truth , so get over it !

[mglima_brazil]

About color systems: Everybody is saying the 550 / 650 didnt work in all systems like AIW´s.. Did you tested with ATI MULTIMEDIA CENTER? There we can choose all systems.. Not in a PINNACLE STUDIO 8 for example (that came with my ATI ALL IN WONDER 9800PRO). In there, we can only choose between NTSC and PAL (not the variables like, pal-m, pal-n etc..)

About forcing drivers on WINDOWS VISTA: My AIW WDM hardware are found by windows but the original bundle software cant install. Is there a way to force that? [

[Bill T]

Hussain,

Its supported in the ASIC, which is the Theater 650 Pro chip. The board needs to be designed for regional specifications. Right now we are shipping in North America with the TV Wonder 650 board, which is different than the requirements for other regions (like Europe, for example).

The reason it is on our website, is that other companies, like Sapphire or MSI or VisionTek, can buy that chip from us, and build a PAL board around it.

I agree that it can be a bit confusing to the customer that they named the chip Theater 650 Pro, and the latest card, TV Wonder 650. But that's just the way ATI decided to market it. Not much I can do about that.

spacded,

The ATI TV Wonder Elite, was based on the Theater 550 Chip, but was never made as a PAL card by ATI. The Theater 550 chip though was bought by many other companies, and they made boards to make it work with PAL.

[Super XP]

I can't wait for this Theater 650 Pro version. My Media box is waiting for it.

[Octavean]

Originally Posted by Bill T

I will let you know about the HDTV Wonder and the TV Wonder 650 in MCE 2k5 hopefully tomorrow. I have been having difficulty getting a hold of the proper infomation on that.

Fair enough, I would like this information before proceeding with the purchase. The link to the post outlining the issue or possible issue with the HDTV Wonder and Theater 650 installed together in MCE has given me some reason for concern.

Originally Posted by Bill T

And for the erroroneos error message in MCE, I have passed it on, but I don't believe it has been fixed yet

Fair enough, I had hoped that it would have been fixed by now but I do realize these things take time. From my observation issues like this are often either fixed quickly upon becoming aware of them or they are never adequately addressed.

Time will tell how this is ultimately resolved.

However, one would hope that at the very least an official “Knowledge Base” informing users of this Theater 650 / TV Wonder 650 issue in MCE would be in place by now.

I’ve checked over at “ATI Customer Care” and have found nothing informing the user thus far of this known issue.

It has been approximately ~30 days since this issue has come to light and hopefully the information is actually there or will be posted very soon.

Originally Posted by Bill T

Octavean - I do miss some of your questions, but sometimes that's on purpose For example: Is CMC is PowerCinema 4 with a makeover? CMC is ATI's software, so I'll continue ignoring that question. Hope that's clear enough.

Clear, direct and accurate answers garner appreciation. Courtesy and respect do too. Had you actually answered the questions it would have never been posted again. It is simple enough to say that you couldn’t or wouldn’t answer the question due to legal restraints or ATI policy (or whatever). Either response is in fact an answer in and of itself.

Simply put, with all due respect, if you find a question untenable it would be advisable to simply speak to that end immediately rather then whatever it was that you were doing.

Rest assured the CMC question will not be asked of you again by me.

[Octavean]

The ATI TV Wonder 650 Retail card 100-715331 is now available on newegg.com for $119.99 + $5.64 Three Day Shipping:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815294001

ATI also now has stock of the TV Wonder 650 card Part Number: 100-715331

http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=3055145

BTW, the rework can be seen on the card in the fourth photo from newegg.

[fdisker]

Bill,

Any idea when we'll see some Vista drivers available for the 650? I have a fresh copy of RC2 installed but the 650 is not recognized.

TIA.

[denyart]

Has anyone noticed problems with the 650 when the computer is brought out of standby? I can't use one or both of my 650s when I bring my computer back out of S3 standby. I never had problems before, but with my dual 650 setup I can usually only use one of my tuners when my computer is woken from standby. I also wonder if/when the algorithm in MCE will realize that the digital tuner on the 650 can't be used at the same time as the analog tuner. I have been using two other digital tuners, but I would like to add the ability to use the 2 digital tuners available on my 650s as a "last resort" when the other digital tuners are busy. I originally tried this, but since media center doesn't realize ahead of time when the tuner is busy I get a bunch of errors about the tuner being controlled by an external program.

[dabl]

Originally Posted by fdisker

Bill,

Any idea when we'll see some Vista drivers available for the 650? I have a fresh copy of RC2 installed but the 650 is not recognized.

TIA.

I'm interested in this as well.

When is ATI planning to make Vista drivers (beta or otherwise) available for the Theatre 650?

[Octavean]

That Vista driver question fdisker asked is really a good question IMO since some companies are just starting to release WHQL certified drivers for Vista. However, I’m sure we all understand that these things take time especially for products that don’t observe a unified driver model and the pesky matter of Vista code not being 100% finalized.

There have been a number of reports that TV Wonder 650 owners have only been able to get either the analog or the digital components of the card functional in Vista MCE setup at any given time. Knowing full well that these Vista builds represent an unfinished product one still may wonder if this either / or approach is a means of dealing with the concurrent tuner limitation of the TV Wonder 650. Remember that the HDTV Wonder officially lost its analog capability in MCE seemingly to comply with the Microsoft PVR app with respect to its similar concurrent tuner issue. Forcing an either / or situation might be a bit better then totally truncating the analog tuner but hopefully it will not come to that.

I purchased and installed an ATI TV Wonder 650. The system specification are as follows:

Dual 17” LCD display
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
1GB TwinMOS Speed Premium PC3200 RAM
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
ATI X800XL
ATI HDTV Wonder
ATI TV Wonder 650
Visiontek Theater 550 Pro
ATX 400W PSU
Antec Server Case
MCE 2K5 + RU2 + all relevant updates

To give the TV Wonder 650 the best possible operating environment I felt that it was advisable to evaluate it in a system with a retail OS rather then a beta or RC.

[Bill T]

Hey Octavean,

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on the 650 and HDTV wonder in MCE 2k5 question. But I was having difficulty getting the analog working on the HDTV Wonder. So it seems that you can only get 2x digital, and 1x analog, and the analog comes from the TV Wonder 650. I just found out, after waiting time trying to get it to work, that this is a known issue, and is unlikely to be fixed.

As for the Vista RC2 drivers. There aren't any currently released, and I'm not sure if they will be releasing any. The driver will come with Vista in it's final release. There may be some posted on our website sooner, but I'm not sure when that will be.

Hey Denyart,

I set up a system with 2 TV Wonder 650's and I put it in standby and come out of standby and both still work fine. Could you give me some details about your system setup and I will look into it further. Also make sure you have all the latest updates.

[Bill T]

Hey Octavean,

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on the 650 and HDTV wonder in MCE 2k5 question. But I was having difficulty getting the analog working on the HDTV Wonder. So it seems that you can only get 2x digital, and 1x analog, and the analog comes from the TV Wonder 650. I just found out, after waiting time trying to get it to work, that this is a known issue, and is unlikely to be fixed.

As for the Vista RC2 drivers. There aren't any currently released, and I'm not sure if they will be releasing any. The driver will come with Vista in it's final release. There may be some posted on our website sooner, but I'm not sure when that will be.

Hey Denyart,

I set up a system with 2 TV Wonder 650's and I put it in standby and come out of standby and both still work fine. Could you give me some details about your system setup and I will look into it further. Also make sure you have all the latest updates.

[Octavean]

Thanks for the response Bill T and thanks for the effort that you put into answering my question regarding TV Wonder 650 and HDTV Wonder cohabitation / operation within MCE.

Just a quick evaluation of the TV Wonder 650:

The tuner allocation after the addition of the TV Wonder 650 and MCE configuration is follows:

ATI HDTV Wonder – primary digital tuner + unused analog tuner (MCEE component of the Kram Mod pack makes the analog functional but MCE only offically supports 2x analog + 2x digital)

ATI TV Wonder 650 - secondary analog tuner + secondary digital tuner

Visiontek Theater 550 Pro - primary analog tuner

This configuration allows for a concurrent 2x analog + 1x digital watch / record environment or a concurrent 1x analog + 2x digital watch / record environment.

This was an automatic configuration so no manual manipulation was needed and it seems to do well for the most part. Do take note however that both the Theater 550 Pro and the analog component of the Theater 650 show up in the registry of MCE as “ATI AVStream Analog Tuner” which makes it rather difficult to distinguish between the two.

The analog tuner on the TV Wonder 650 is somewhat louder then the Theater 550 Pro but not overly so.

The digital tuner on the TV Wonder 650 seems every bit as capable as that of the HDTV Wonder’s. Channel change on the TV Wonder 650 digital tuner is a bit faster in locking in the channel then the HDTV Wonder.

The HDTV antenna configuration consists of two ATI branded Zenith ZHDTV1 Silver antenna’s connected to an amplifier. The amplifier has four accessible amplified connections. The two HDTV Wonder cards (in two different systems) share one connection to an amplifier lead via a splitter and the TV Wonder 650 has a dedicated un-split connection to the amplifier. Presumably this gives the TV Wonder 650 a better signal then that of the HDTV Wonder cards.

BTW, the rework on the back of the card really looks like an ugly hack job and while I am willing to give the card a fair chance I can understand if others simply returned the card based on appearance alone.

There doesn’t seem to be any issues going into or coming out of standby,…...on this system.

One question to Bill T:

Even though it is known that Theater 650 cards are Vista Premium logo products it hasn’t been specified, to the best of my knowledge, if Vista MCE would officially allow both analog and digital components to be configured and both be available so that Vista MCE could quickly switch between the two? Right now, it almost seems that only one or the other can be configured at any given time in Vista MCE RC1 or RC2 (without a rather involved workaround).

So simply put, is it ATI’s intention to have both the analog and digital prowess of the Theater 650 simultaneously configurable and usable in Vista MCE (even though concurrent operation isn’t possible and creates erroneous error messages in MCE 2K5) as it currently is in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

My concern here is that TV Wonder 650 owners and future TV Wonder 650 users will find that their cards are only officially configurable as one or the other but not both once Vista becomes available,…and that might be something that just hasn’t been made clear to them.

After all, the HDTV Wonder lost half of its official functionality in MCE so its not unreasonable to be concerned about a similar heavy handed approach with a product that has a similar limitation.

[denyart]

Originally Posted by Bill T

Hey Denyart,

I set up a system with 2 TV Wonder 650's and I put it in standby and come out of standby and both still work fine. Could you give me some details about your system setup and I will look into it further. Also make sure you have all the latest updates.

Okay, my system is an AMD XP based NForce 2 ultra (Abit NF7-S version 2) system. I have an ATI HDTV Wonder (used for digital only), a VBOX DTA 150 and the pair of 650s. I set my BIOS to S3 standby, and I added the registry key to enable S3 standby and resume. I have used it before in this configuration with other tuners (NVTV, HDTV Wonder) and the tuners worked fine after resuming from standby. The 650s seem to work somewhat after resume, but I cannot use both of them afer a resume. One will show Live TV just fine, but I can't get one to record and use the other one. Sometimes I can't even get Live TV to work with a 650 after a resume. I am using the newest 650 driver and all other drivers are the newest available. I have had a Hauppauge 500 installed on this system and then removed, but that is all taht I can think of. My decoder is the PureVideo decoder 1.02-223 and the video card and driver are NVidia 7600GS AGP with 91.47 MCE driver. I am not sure what else you would need to know to look into this, but I may end up looking into reinstalling from a previous image if I seem to be the only person having this problem. Is there any special way to install the ATI drivers? I know with the HDTV Wonder it was best to install the driver first and then put in the card. With the 650s I was installing the driver after installing the card. I then installed the C patch and then the control panel. The only thing I have done with the control panel was to set the audio to 255 (is there any way to get the default audio a little higher?). Thanks Bill!