Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[jake123]

While there are still some details to work out...cablecards will probably debut in new PCs at first. However, from what I read, Direct TV (satellite) will probably utilize their own receivers to deliver their HDTV/Digital signal directly to the PC. I'm sure they will incorporate some "copy protection" in their signal or access card, preventing duplication of protected material. Going this route, Direct TV, will be more attractive to those who don't want to invest in buying another HTPC that is made cable ready and "compliant" by the OEM. The next few months will probable tell the story. Insofar as tuner cards are concerned, they will probable not be part of the equation. If that's the case, tuner cards will only appeal to a very small group. ATI...are you up and awake?

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Just some clarifying comments:
Seraphic-, go check out more details on our Theater 650 Pro webpage. You can find a link to it at the top of this thread. I'll repeat it here for your benefit though, yes Theater 650 Pro products will work with Windows XP and we expect most will be shipping with our new Catalyst Media Center (CMC), which is aimed at XP users.

jake123, you need to calm down and have some patience. First of all, what ATI announced was the Theater 650 Pro chip and that's already been released and is available to partners. Second, lets not bring the Nvidia card into this discussion please. We've already covered it in some detail on the long Theater 550 Pro thread on this forum and you can search for it to see what I and others have said. Last, there's no point in discussing things like surveys because they don't really mean anything real and to speculate is almost a waste of time. Just a side comment though, if they need a survey to see if people want digital TV tuners, that's kind of sad considering that's what the industry's becoming all about.

[dabl]

Just another data point but I'm in the same boat as jake123.

I'm all ready to go with my HTPC and am waiting with baited breath for a dual tuner ATSC/standard def PCI-e form factor card which is a requirement for me (other than going usb external of course).

I was looking at the VBOX Cat's Eye 164, but the lack of a hardware encoder for standard def MPEG-2 recording makes it much less appealing than the Threatre 650 specs.

I'm very much looking forward to hearing about the actual release of one of these Theatre 650 cards at the earliest possible date. I presume I'll get the scoop checking this thread.....

[Seraphic-]

I just talked to a representative from one of the companies listed in your 650 Pro "Partner Products". They told me that they don't expect the have the card ready to ship until the first week of September.

If that's true, I really can't wait that long. I might need to look into another card...

[jake123]

Mike, it's not me or anyone on this forum thats making a big hoopla about the 650. ATI's Home Page bangs out the hysteria with their 650. The average person who visits a web page and sees a big splash on a product will assume that product is available for purchase. That is the nature of business. However, even the most reasonable person around will start to become impatient when told "soon, or near future", or in July and nothing happens, or cannot be given a real date when this product will be available.

If ATI is so hot on this product, why don't they manufacture it themselves as they do with thier other products and sell it on their ATI online store, instead of subbing it out to a third party (partner) who has their own product concerns and priorities.

So if we seem to a bit impatient, it is because we made decisions and investments based on the "expected" product availability of the 650. Just as others here, my HTPC is only missing the Tuner Card, which I held off awaiting the 650. But if it looks like September or October, I will go another way with this.

It was ATI that raise the hysteria level here with their promise of all the great things the 650 can do. The masses had nothing do do with that. They simply waited and waited.

[spacded]

Originally Posted by jake123

Mike, it's not me or anyone on this forum thats making a big hoopla about the 650. ATI's Home Page bangs out the hysteria with their 650. The average person who visits a web page and sees a big splash on a product will assume that product is available for purchase. That is the nature of business. However, even the most reasonable person around will start to become impatient when told "soon, or near future", or in July and nothing happens, or cannot be given a real date when this product will be available.

If ATI is so hot on this product, why don't they manufacture it themselves as they do with thier other products and sell it on their ATI online store, instead of subbing it out to a third party (partner) who has their own product concerns and priorities.

So if we seem to a bit impatient, it is because we made decisions and investments based on the "expected" product availability of the 650. Just as others here, my HTPC is only missing the Tuner Card, which I held off awaiting the 650. But if it looks like September or October, I will go another way with this.

It was ATI that raise the hysteria level here with their promise of all the great things the 650 can do. The masses had nothing do do with that. They simply waited and waited.

Dude you EVER see an IT company that MET A DEADLINE!! just buy a 550 pro for now if your so desperate , its still a very good card and chill on the 650 pro until it comes out.

I will prob get a 650 pro but im still well pleased with my 550 pros quality and you can pick em up cheep these days

[Seraphic-]

I hope the card is out soon, I really need to start busting out videos for my website.

Anyway, I have a question I wanted to ask so I understand how this works. Don't NTSC Televisions and Playstation 2s display video at 640x480? If I use the 650 Pro to capture at 720x480 won't the image be stretched-to-fit?

[dabl]

My post reminded me that somehow I got the idea that this card would be available in a PCI-e form factor.

Am I wrong about that?

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
A few comments for you guys:
I'd like to repeat one more time for people that I'm not at liberty to speak of when Theater 650 Pro based products will be released, except that it's really soon. You guys have to understand that ATI would want you guys to buy these just as much as you do and getting products released is a pretty lengthy process and everything possible is being done to get products in your hands as soon as possible. So lets leave that discussion for the time being and you'll be able to buy these cards before you know it!

Seraphic-, don't worry too much about this NTSC resolution. If you look it up, it's kind of tricky some NTSC is broadcast at 640 and some at 720. I'm not really too sure what's the difference, but I the chip is capable of doing both accurately and doesn't need to stretch anything.

dabl, check out the Theater 650 Pro page (link at the start of this thread) for more info. Just for your benefit though, yes the Theater 650 Pro supports PCIE x1 interface. So you should be able to find some companies that sell Theater 650 Pro based PCIE boards.

[Seraphic-]

Hi Mike,

What do you recommend to deinterlace captured video using the Theater 650 Pro? Also, why wasn't an onboard hardware deinterlacer put into the Theater 650 Pro?

Thanks

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
I don't really do anything special for deinterlacing. All the systems I test with have an ATI graphics card and that does all the deinterlacing I need. There's not hardware deinterlacer in the Theater 650 Pro because it's just not something the chip is meant to do. I think this was discussed earlier in this thread, so take a look back for more details.

[Seraphic-]

H Mike,

I have an Radeon 9700 (I know, I need to upgrade =D)

But how do you use your graphics card to deinterlace video captured using the Theater 650 Pro? Is it lossless or lossy and is it part of the capture software that comes with the Theater 650 Pro?

Do you deinterlace during the capture or after? I've been having to do it after the capture using AviSynth. However, I get small issues like seen below.



Please be descriptive as i'm REALLY interested in finding out the best way to deinterlace video without artifacts.

Thanks

[spacded]

Its quite funny that apart from ATI shouting about it, NOT ONE of the so called 'partner' agencies mention this on their websites,
yet MM you say its almost ready to go!

Could this have something to do with the fact that ATI have been taken over by AMD?

[Octavean]

Indeed, it is eerily silent on that front is it not!?!

Usually when a company has something noteworthy they want to shout it from the rafters but Theater 650 Pro partners don’t seem to be saying much at all. Its understandable if they are bound by an NDA but with the Theater 650 Pro chip already announced and said companies already named as partners it seems totally unnecessary to apply any such NDA at this time.

In any case, I came across another preview/review of the Theater 650 Pro here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/ATI_Theater_...-31908877.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/ATI_Theater_...2.html?tag=nav

Originally Posted by Cnet Reviewed by Dan Ackerman

The leader in TV tuner technology up until now has been ATI's TV Wonder Elite. ATI's Theater 550 Pro video-processing chip powers the low-profile card and delivers decent TV image quality. The company's newest version of the chip--the Theater 650 Pro--was announced yesterday and offers incremental improvements over its predecessor. Tuner cards featuring the Theater 650 Pro chip will be available from manufacturers such as MSI and Sapphire , and those products should range from $100 to $150. The new chip offers enough of a boost to image quality that TV-on-your-PC fans should give it a serious look; just know that CableCard technology for PCs is expected to hit next year.

We should start seeing retail cards using the Theater 650 Pro chip in July, but ATI sent us a reference board that we hooked up, via a simple PCI slot, to a Media Center PC in CNET Labs. In our hands-on tests, the Theater 650 Pro was the best TV tuner hardware we've seen to date. The Theater 650 Pro boasts a new video decoder along with several picture-quality tweaks and performance improvements. Some of the highlights include support for NTSC, PAL, and SECAM signals, plus digital TV via ATSC and DVB-T (the European digital standard), and hardware MPEG-2 encoding to spare your CPU from doing all the heavy lifting.

So according to this, Theater 650 Pro cards should retail between $100 to $150.

Retail Theater 650 Pro cards should be available in July (which is widely believed but looking unlikely).

The review sample was a reference board not a retail product but that’s not so uncommon given the date (one day after the Theater 650 Pro chip official announcement).

Originally Posted by Cnet Reviewed by Dan Ackerman

The good: Best-looking TV tuner hardware we've seen; supports both NTSC and ATSC; works well with Media Center and other PC DVR apps.

The bad: Even the best TV tuner has a worse image than a standard cable signal; CableCard will make other TV tuners obsolete next year.

The bottom line: Though it improves upon the category leader, with CableCard's technology for PCs on the horizon, ATI's latest TV tuner chip, the Theater 650 Pro, is only a stopgap solution for those looking to add TV to their PC.

Sorry if this review has already been linked too.

***edit***

There are more bits here:

Originally Posted by Wolfgang Gruener

ATI told TG Daily that TV tuner cards, including boards from Asus, Sapphire, MSI, Powercolor and Visiontek, will become available in the July time frame. According to the manufacturer, the 650 Pro chip meets Microsoft's requirements to carry the "Vista Premium" logo.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/06/06/at...s_theater_650/

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/edi...c08a.asp&guid=


I’ll just take note that this is yet another reference to the ubiquitous July time frame for Theater 650 Pro and the source is apparently an ATI representative.

One minor point, since Vista hasn’t been released or finalized, technically the specifications that presumably the Theater 650 Pro follows to qualify it as a Vista logo part could change.

[hrlslcbr]

Seraphic-
Although I think discussing this is a little bit off topic, what do you want to do with the video? You want to deinterlace it to watch it in real time on your monitor, or you want to make a DVD?
I believe MM said he uses his video card to deinterlace it, because most cards can decode MPEG-2 streams with a decoder that uses DXVA. If you want to deinterlace the video to convert it to some format, you can't use a video card. And, by the way, no deinterlacing mode is lossless.

[Seraphic-]

Well, at my website, I make gameplay videos of boss battles and dungeon guides from tri-Ace games off my Playstaion 2. So after I capture videos and then encode using xvid or realmedia. Couldn' I use the video card to deinterlace the video before I encode using another format? (I'm trying to find the best way to deinterlace video without a lot of artifacts)