Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[Octavean]

To be perfectly honest I don’t really know how legitimate “Bill T” really is,….I certainly cannot vouch for him one way or the other.

However, anyone caring to contact AMD / ATI support could try referencing this thread as presumably having an AMD / ATI representative (Bill T) answering questions about the TV Wonder 650. In such a case AMD / ATI tech support should be able to clarify the stark discrepancy that we obviously see with respect to official dual TV Wonder 650 configuration support under MCE.

Again, I’m not saying which one is right, just that someone is obviously wrong in this respect. Given Bill T’s recent absenteeism, and recent evasiveness in terms of answering some “legitimate“ questions, I have little faith that he will clarify this issue in a timely (satisfactory) manner if at all.

In either case legitimate clarification is in order because someone muddied the water.

[Super XP]

http://forums.hexus.net/showpost.php...&postcount=500


http://forums.hexus.net/showpost.php...&postcount=321

Seems to be a serious conflict here. Either the TV Wonder 650 is fully supported in a dual configuration under MCE or it isn’t but it cannot be both.

Well, Dual Theater 550's work like a charm in MCE 2005, but only in 2005. It will work in 2002 MCE, but you will require a complete Windows Update.

So I do not see why the 650's wouldn't work?

[Octavean]

Well, Dual Theater 550's work like a charm in MCE 2005, but only in 2005. It will work in 2002 MCE, but you will require a complete Windows Update.

So I do not see why the 650's wouldn't work?

It is well known that dual Theater 550 Pro cards are serviceable in MCE 2K5.

The TV Wonder 650 is something of a different animal however. No one is saying that dual TV Wonder 650 cards (or more) are not operable in MCE. There are some reported issues with such a configuration. There is also a standing conflict as to whether or not ATI considers it to be an officially supported configuration with which they will pursue any applicable fixes.

Bill T clearly stated “Dual TV Wonder 650's is fully supported in MCE” which suggest that it should work without issue and if it does not assistance will be rendered in some form.

Vddobrev’s dealings with AMD /ATI tech support suggest that they consider it to be an unsupported configuration and that they will not render any assistance whatsoever.

[denyart]

Currently the only major issue is dual 650 setups not performing as expected when coming out of S3 standby. At least two of us have found an issue where the "record" tuner works after a resume form standby, but the "watch" tuner doesn't work. A complete restart fixes this (possibly other methods will work too), but for those of us with 2 650s who want to use standby it is a bit annoying. If ATI/AMD chooses not to fix this it would be pretty disappointing, but not a deal breaker for me. I will use it as is until I get my new OCUR digital cable ready VistaMC machine next year. I just hope they do decide to fix it at some point soon because the tuner is an otherwise good piece of hardware. It has the best analog picture I have seen in a MCE analog tuner.

[Bill T]

Hey,

Sorry for taking so long with this, but it is still too soon to tell exactly how things will work in Vista since everything is not ready yet. Here is an update on what the current plans are that I can share with you.

The ability to use Vista MCE with both Digital and Analog without having to run setup again is an issue being looked at.

As a partial solution we plan to release a version of CMC(Catalyst Media Center) for Vista that works as it does in XP, with both Analog and Digital tuning readily available. This will be a free upgrade to those who have already purchased a product that shipped with CMC.

We plan to make CMC available for purchase to others who have not already purchased a product that shipped with CMC. We plan to make this available shortly after the retail version of Vista is released.


About the dual 650 cards coming out of standby. Is the even an MCE issue? You say that when you return from standby, only 1 card works. Does this only happen in MCE, or does is also happen in CMC or any other applications?

[vddobrev]

Hey,

Sorry for taking so long with this, but it is still too soon to tell exactly how things will work in Vista since everything is not ready yet. Here is an update on what the current plans are that I can share with you.

The ability to use Vista MCE with both Digital and Analog without having to run setup again is an issue being looked at.

As a partial solution we plan to release a version of CMC(Catalyst Media Center) for Vista that works as it does in XP, with both Analog and Digital tuning readily available. This will be a free upgrade to those who have already purchased a product that shipped with CMC.

We plan to make CMC available for purchase to others who have not already purchased a product that shipped with CMC. We plan to make this available shortly after the retail version of Vista is released.


About the dual 650 cards coming out of standby. Is the even an MCE issue? You say that when you return from standby, only 1 card works. Does this only happen in MCE, or does is also happen in CMC or any other applications?

Bill T, it hapens with MCE 2005, as well as with Beyond TV 4. After resume from standby, the second tuner is not working - it seems like a driver isue, it is not being initialized properly upon resume.

I couldn't care less about CMC - I will not bother installing it just to check it out. What's the point of using MCE otherwise?

I am just wondering how ATI 650 obtained the "Designed for Windows XP Media Center Edition" - 2 tuners is a supported configuration in MCE!!! Now do they have to be from different manufactureres? Did you guys at ATI just tested a single 650 card with MCE? Just curious.

I am also wondering what exactly does it mean "Windows Vista Ready - ATI Certified"? Also, quote:
"In fact, TV Wonder™ 650 is Windows Vista™ Premium ready, which ensures that you will be able to take full advantage of TV Wonder™ 650’s powerhouse of media capabilities for years to come."

How can this be true if, by your words, the 650 is not! Again, using CMC defeats the purpose of using Windows Media Center, so I am not sure that providing a working version of CMC is a good option. Rather than investing time in making the CMC work in vista, I believe it is wiser to invest time and more efforts in making a good driver for both XP and Vista.

The above quotes can be found at http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonder650/index.html

[vddobrev]

Bill T, can you please verify that you actually work for ATI? What department?

I just got this from ATI regarding my support ticket:

"737-23923: TV Wonder 650 PCI: Live TV in Media Center will not work after system resumes from standby.

The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):
TV Wonder 650 PCI
Intel D975XBX motherboard
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Symptoms:
On some configurations, with two TV Wonder 650 PCI setup in a system, the Media Center application may fail to work after system awakes from any standby mode.

Setup two TV Wonder 650 PCI on an Intel D975XBX motherboard. Power on the system, open up My TV from Media Center application and users should be able to watch a channel and record another channel because of the two tuners setup. Put the system in standby mode and awake it using either mouse or keyboard. Open up Live TV from Media Center application and users might notice an error "Cannot Play Program".

Solution:
Currently there is no solution.

Users will have to restart the system to get Media Center application working again.

ATI Engineering has been advised of this issue and is investigating. Any updates will be published when they become available."

It has been made a KB article: http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...cketID=1137421

[denyart]

Bill, thanks for getting back on this. It would seem to me that the best effort should be put towards making drivers that work in Vista and XP-MCE. These are going to be the most influential pieces of software for these tuners to get mass appeal by the enthusiasts and the OEMs (IMO). It may be that OEMs never use these tuners in a system, and right now I wouldn't blame them but they have good potential if they could be made to work more reliably on most hardware platforms. I was curious as to what systems have passed a dual 650 S3 standby and resume test. If one could verify a working configuration it would certainly help narrow this down for engineering. I also hope that engineering is going to work on this and fix it. If they give up and leave it as a known bug that is never going to be fixed it will only add fuel to the fire for those people who just bash ATI for these very problems. I for one don't beleive that ATI is "crap" or any of that nonsense, but at the same time I do seem to be sitting here with a hardware/driver problem that most other tuner manufacturers don't have. Granted I have not tried any other hybrid tuners, but in my particular case I wasn't even using the hybrid aspect of this tuner. I was just hoping for a high quality analog tuner. I got the high quality pictuer I was hoping for, but I lost S3 standby in the process. If there is anything I can do to help this, just let me know.

[vddobrev]

On my part, I have reproduced the standby issue on three motherboards, all of them Intel:
D875PBZ
D975XBX
D975XBX2
This might help engineering.

[denyart]

I have reproduced it on an NVidia nForce2 Ultra system. I believe we both have been using NVidia video cards, though I may be wrong about that. Does anyone have any system with 2 of these where it does work?

[drumzac]

I don't know if this is the place I would ask this...

I was reading various reviews and so on about the Theater 650 and I have a few questions. Has this model been discontinued? I also read this product was recalled for undisclosed reasons, again this is why I'm asking, I don't believe much of what I read on the internet.

Does anyone know if any place in Canada has this card in stock? Whether a store front or online?

Please help! I would love to get myself into a Theater 650.

[Octavean]

Hey,

Sorry for taking so long with this, but it is still too soon to tell exactly how things will work in Vista since everything is not ready yet. Here is an update on what the current plans are that I can share with you.

With all due respect Bill, that’s more then a little vague.

What exactly isn’t ready? Perhaps Vista drivers for the TV Wonder 650 aren’t ready? Is that what you meant?

In many ways Vista is already here. Official release being something on the order of ~December 30 th 2006 for select business oriented versions and ~January 30 th 2007 for others. However, as already stated, many MSDN and Connect members already have access to the OS in its various shipping forms so the OS itself doesn’t seem to be the issue.

The ability to use Vista MCE with both Digital and Analog without having to run setup again is an issue being looked at.

Again, not very clear here but is sounds like an acknowledgement of the Status quo being one where the TV Wonder 650 is indeed forced into either a digital or analog state in the shipping version of Vista MCE,….with no official fix.

As a partial solution we plan to release a version of CMC(Catalyst Media Center) for Vista that works as it does in XP, with both Analog and Digital tuning readily available. This will be a free upgrade to those who have already purchased a product that shipped with CMC.

We plan to make CMC available for purchase to others who have not already purchased a product that shipped with CMC. We plan to make this available shortly after the retail version of Vista is released.

As a partial Solution to losing sequential analog and digital functionality in Vista MCE an updated version of CMC is offered for free to users who already own a CMC license?

I can say with certainty that most MCE 2K5 user that currently have sequential analog and digital functionality with the TV Wonder 650 and that stand to lose it when upgrading to Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate Edition with Vista MCE) will consider a free upgraded version of CMC to be a very poor “Partial Solution”.

Currently there may be various ways to circumvent a forced analog or digital only state with the TV Wonder 650 (and HDTV Wonder) in the final version of Vista but users shouldn’t have to resort to such extreme measures.

Naturally the concurrent tuner issue that results in a known “Erroneous Error” in MCE 2K5 (and possibly corrupted and missed recordings) would likely still be present in Vista if both analog and digital components of the TV Wonder 650 were accessible. As such, this is looking very much like a heavy handed approach to fixing this known bug,….by truncating either analog or digital functionality,…


In any event, if there will be a forced analog or digital state in Vista MCE, AMD / ATI needs to make this clear in all advertising material and documentation for the TV Wonder 650 sooner rather then later.

About the dual 650 cards coming out of standby. Is the even an MCE issue? You say that when you return from standby, only 1 card works. Does this only happen in MCE, or does is also happen in CMC or any other applications?

Hey guys,

Dual TV Wonder 650's is fully supported in MCE. I just tried it out for myself, and it seems to work very well. You can record any 2 channels at once, analog or digital. Or record one channel, and still be able to surf through all your analog and digital channels.
When recording 2 channels, you can only switch between though 2 channels, which is expected.

If there is anything specific that you would like me to try out with the Dual 650's in MCE, let me know. Thanks.

http://forums.hexus.net/showpost.php...&postcount=321

You stated that “Dual TV Wonder 650's is fully supported in MCE“. Is this indeed true? Will dual TV Wonder users running MCE 2K5 be told by AMD / ATI tech support that dual TV Wonder 650 cards are an unsupported configuration under MCE 2K5,…..because it seems to be happening,…..?

[Super XP]

With all due respect Bill, that’s more then a little vague.

What exactly isn’t ready? Perhaps Vista drivers for the TV Wonder 650 aren’t ready? Is that what you meant?

In many ways Vista is already here. Official release being something on the order of ~December 30 th 2006 for select business oriented versions and ~January 30 th 2007 for others. However, as already stated, many MSDN and Connect members already have access to the OS in its various shipping forms so the OS itself doesn’t seem to be the issue.



Again, not very clear here but is sounds like an acknowledgement of the Status quo being one where the TV Wonder 650 is indeed forced into either a digital or analog state in the shipping version of Vista MCE,….with no official fix.



As a partial Solution to losing sequential analog and digital functionality in Vista MCE an updated version of CMC is offered for free to users who already own a CMC license?

I can say with certainty that most MCE 2K5 user that currently have sequential analog and digital functionality with the TV Wonder 650 and that stand to lose it when upgrading to Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate Edition with Vista MCE) will consider a free upgraded version of CMC to be a very poor “Partial Solution”.

Currently there may be various ways to circumvent a forced analog or digital only state with the TV Wonder 650 (and HDTV Wonder) in the final version of Vista but users shouldn’t have to resort to such extreme measures.

Naturally the concurrent tuner issue that results in a known “Erroneous Error” in MCE 2K5 (and possibly corrupted and missed recordings) would likely still be present in Vista if both analog and digital components of the TV Wonder 650 were accessible. As such, this is looking very much like a heavy handed approach to fixing this known bug,….by truncating either analog or digital functionality,…


In any event, if there will be a forced analog or digital state in Vista MCE, AMD / ATI needs to make this clear in all advertising material and documentation for the TV Wonder 650 sooner rather then later.






http://forums.hexus.net/showpost.php...&postcount=321

You stated that “Dual TV Wonder 650's is fully supported in MCE“. Is this indeed true? Will dual TV Wonder users running MCE 2K5 be told by AMD / ATI tech support that dual TV Wonder 650 cards are an unsupported configuration under MCE 2K5,…..because it seems to be happening,…..?

Well, if two Theater 550 Pro's are fully supported with Windows XP SP2 & MCE 2005, then I don't see why the 650's would not be supported?

[Octavean]

Well, if two Theater 550 Pro's are fully supported with Windows XP SP2 & MCE 2005, then I don't see why the 650's would not be supported?

Super XP, the TV Wonder 650 and the Theater 550 Pro cards are not the same. As such they can and sometimes will react differently under what would otherwise be the same set of circumstances.

For example:

The TV Wonder 650 is a hybrid analog + digital card whereas the Theater 550 Pro line is not. Consequently, the TV Wonder 650 has a known bug in MCE resulting from (in all likelihood) its non-concurrent design.

basically, one cannot assume that what is applicable to the Theater 550 Pro is applicable to the TV Wonder 650.

***edit***

With ATI’s propensity to simply drop support for a feature or possibly configuration when it becomes inconvenient (for example the HDTV Wonder’s analog functionality in MCE and quite possibly the TV Wonder 650s sequential analog + digital functionality in Vista) it is worthwhile to confirm whether or not dual TV Wonder 650 cards are indeed supported in MCE 2K5.

This is especially true if a forum member has reported that ATI tech support considers it to be an unsupported configuration.

[Octavean]

BTW, I’ll also add that it has come to my attention that a competing product that has been much anticipated will presumably become available very soon:

VBOX Cat's Eye 164e Dual ATSC Terrestrial HDTV Receiver, PCI Express

The Cat's Eye 164e is a revolutionary dual-channel hybrid HDTV receiver. Its two tuners allow you to view one channel while recording another, or simultaneously record two channels. Each tuner can receive either HDTV (ATSC) or analog NTSC signals, for complete flexibility.

The tuners on the 164e are fully concurrent for simultaneous operations and one card can be setup into analog + analog, digital + digital or analog + digital configurations.

http://www.vboxcomm.com/product3.htm

Drivers for XP and Vista:

http://www.vboxcomm.com/drivers03.htm

[drumzac]

Apparently people didn't see my post, or simply chose to ignore me. I asked a simple question and would appreciate it if someone would answer it.

I don't know if this is the place I would ask this...

I was reading various reviews and so on about the Theater 650 and I have a few questions. Has this model been discontinued? I also read this product was recalled for undisclosed reasons, again this is why I'm asking, I don't believe much of what I read on the internet.

Does anyone know if any place in Canada has this card in stock? Whether a store front or online?

Please help! I would love to get myself into a Theater 650.