New ATI Tuner Card.

[exAndrzej]

It is (honestly) a straight 'no comment'

[neutron]

For the lucky people who have the Theatrix.
Can you answer / look at the following

- schedule a recording, does your computer wake-up from standby and starts recording? This has never functioned with my AIW 9800SE. Somehow the TV Tuner starts up in NTSC mode(I am a PAL user) resulting in black and white scrolling screens.
- how is the sound when recording in DVD mode. I understood one can choose dolby digital and mpeg audio encoding
- When using DVD recorded MPEG file on a DVD R and playback on a standalone DVD player How is the image and sound quality..
- Is audio and video in sync after 1.5 hr recording
(old cards tend to desync after roughly 35 minutes)
- what options are available in the software for capture mode (DVD format, filters etc...)

hope someone has the answer

[wildroo]

Andrzej,
Do you know if ATI is planning a dual tuner version solution using the Theater 550 Pro?

"Anyway, we got a sneak peak of Theater 550 PRO in action, demonstrated by ATI in dual-tuner fashion, using PCI Express variants of the initial basic tuner products."
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD04Nzk=

Well crap, I shoulda read it all before I posted "a pair of 550 PRO tuner boards on PCI Express were installed into an ASUS mainboard... "

I do agree that dual tuner would be a smart solution if the image quality is good.

[neutron]

"The drivers are very poor, perhaps this is why the other add in makers haven't released theres yet! As you may know these things were supposed to be out last month but obviously there still not ready to be sold to the end consumers... The tuner refused to work on my AMD rig, poor drivers however I rebuilt my PC using my old P4 and Abit mobo just to try it out! I was greatly saddened by the whole ordeal... The tuner quality is around that of a 9800 pro AIW (slightly under it), and the software is beyond crap... As far as ATi's claim of a video revolution... well... I'm just glad I only paid 89 dollars for it! While the tuner has potential, its being bush wacked by its software... I can honestly say that there desison to bundle power cinema is a mistake of epic proportions! This stuff is garbage! And to top it off, ATI still has no downloads on there web site for the drivers or MMC 9.0.4! This just makes it even worse... For those of you that happen to have this tuner you can use the WinAmp TV pluging to tune to your channels in style... And yes, this software actually works!

http://www.brics.dk/~barnie/WinampTV/

I have packed mine away into its original box and "if" Ati ever decide to start supporting there product with downloads and driver support then and only then I will try to get this dam thing to work! Oh, and that remote is junk as well..."
..

Above you find the first impressions of Myth. Since he is banned from the forum I had to post it for him. Sounds like the TV tuner and software are weak points of this card.

[wildroo]

Andrzej,

Is the Theater 550 PRO capable of processing and displaying HD quality reception?

Edit: Another couple questions:

Does the tuner work better on Windows XP or Windows MCE, and is there a difference in HOW it works (software wise)?

Does it process surrround sound input/output?

Is there anywhere (with the exception of the two pics on the previous page) that the menu process can be reviewed?

[ciregnol]

Wow, Myth really didn't like that card.

Just to reiterate what I've said already, I had no problem installing the Sapphire card on my Athlon 2500+ system (MSI K7N2G-ILSR mobo). I didn't even install the bundled cinema software, as I use Media Center Edition.

The quality is better than the Aver M-150 and Hauppaug PVR-250 that I have tried before. I'm still running it through some tests and will continue to update this forum.

[e.lectronick]

Above you find the first impressions of Myth. Since he is banned from the forum I had to post it for him. Sounds like the TV tuner and software are weak points of this card.

Just curious why he was banned? I sure hope it wasn't for just speaking his mind.

-Erik.

[e.lectronick]

Andrzej,
Can you tell us if the 550 Pro chip will allow hardware or software capture of .avi or whether it is only capable of hardware MPEG2 capture?

I intend to do quite a bit of editing of the video, and I want to use .avi for this reason. I'm wondering whether the .avi quality will be any better than .avi captured with the AIW 9800Pro with it's earlier Theater 200 chip.

Thanks,
Erik.

[neutron]

Just curious why he was banned? I sure hope it wasn't for just speaking his mind.

-Erik.

No clue why
he did not mention that in his email
he wrote that he was banned for a week though!

[wildroo]

Andrzej,

And yet another couple questions: Is the card with it's remote able to control a cable box and/or a directTV reciever and would you need anything extra to do so?
(I know you can find a program off the net and buy a cable to connect a PC to a Direct TV Reciever but have no idea how the other program would function with this. IT would be best if the Tuner came with a program itself that made it compatable and capable of controlling the cable and Satellite units.)

If it can control a cablebox can you get it to select the "On Demand" and Pay per view channels? (I don't have cable but am considering trying it out.)

[Bilar Crais]

Early indications are that the Theatrix works with BTV (BeyondTV) provided that you use an even numbered bitrate...i.e., 6000mbps rather than 6500mbps.

http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/show...9&page=2&pp=15

[e.lectronick]

Andrzej, I have learned from Sapphire Tech support (they replied the very next day...very cool) that the Theatrix *can* capture to .avi via the capture software you choose to use.

However, it leaves the question someone on another forum brought up:
Does it do this by first capturing to MPEG2 and then uncompressing back to .avi? or does it bypass the encoder entirely and just capture the signal straight to .avi?

This would seem to make a pretty big difference.

Can you clarify this and elaborate on the specifics of how the Theater 550 Pro Chip handles this situation, please?

Thanks,
Erik.

[ciregnol]

OK, I've had a chance to play around a bit more...still much more expirementing to do, but I only have about half an hour a day to play with it.

I now have successfully output to TV.

I am VERY impressed with image quality. I see no difference in picture quality between cable directly hooked to TV or going through the Sapphire card. It's beautiful <wipes a tear>.

HOWEVER, I am seeing some image wierdness at some scene changes. It's hard to describe, but there is a split second of time when the image jitters or something when the scene changes, and sometimes some wavy lines.

Overall, I'd say it's about 90% as good as watching direct cable, keeping in mind that the image looks just as good, but has some scene change issues.

From what I can tell, it handles motion well, although I'll need to do more testing on this. I haven't done enough watching to see too many fast motion scenes, but I have not noticed any blurring of moving objects.

Skin tones and colors look good to me. I was only testing on a 13" low-end TV, but picture looked pretty much identical to direct cable input.

I am very satisfied with the card. It is the best of the 3 cards I have tried. I would love to see how it compares to the new Nvidia dual tuner cards, as the dual tuner certainly does appeal to me.

If anyone is in the Seattle area (Renton), you're welcome to come take a peek.

[wenis]

What is the quality when capturing from a DVD player? I would really like to know.

[e.lectronick]

Ciregnol,
I don't remember where I saw it posted (I think on another forum), but it was suggested that best judgement of the card is made when viewing the playback output of a captured file. When watching a program you've recorded using the card, does it still show those weird glitches during scene changes?
-Erik.

[ciregnol]

Hmm. Erik, I'll check to see if recorded shows have the glitches when I get home.

Wenis, my computer is on a different floor from my DVD player, so I likely won't be able to test capture from DVD player soon. Maybe I'll bring the DVD player down and test it for you in the next day or two, if I have time. I'm sure the picture quality will be great, but we'll have to see if it has the same glitches as live TV.