New ATI Tuner Card.

[satnav4]

Well... the antenna in the attic worked. All I needed was a length of old fashioned 300 ohm antenna cable for five dollars US and I was off and running. Of course walking around in the attic is not that pleasant. Luckily I put lights up in there a couple of years ago. The great thing about HDTV is it doesn't need encoding... so no CPU utilization to speak of. Playback (decoding) is a different matter. It really taxes the CPU. With my old GeForce 5200FX card, it ain't pretty watching so called "live" TV. Recording it first then watching it is a little easier... but even then I might need a 6XXX series GeForce+ PureVideo to do the trick. I tried recording then transcoding to DVD and that came out really beautiful on the DVD player. On par with the best store bought DVDs. Lovely, lovely colors and resolution.

Jonas

Great news! When you record HDTV, what resolution does your program use and how much space does it use on your HD? Sorry to get off topic.

S.

[satnav4]

Guys,

You did recognize you're writing in an ATI multimedia care forum, did you? With X1k series we score 108 points in HQV Video tests, so I don't see (and like) why any recommendations for NVidia hardware should be discussed here.
Have a look at http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ty/default.asp , and you will see ATI has the better video quality anyway. And we don't charge extra for quality, if you know what I mean

It looked to me like Jonas was doing a little Nvidia bashing there; perhaps some designed obsolesence confirmation. Regardless, we are ATI supporters here, Jonas included, for the most part.

While you are checking in, what product does ATI have or have planned to give 550 functionality, at the same time supporting the all digital standard in 2009? I have 2 550's, 2 Hauppauge 150's, an AIW 9800, an AIW X800 and a Hauppauge USB2 that will be useless garbage for TV viewing/capturing in 2009. I am interested in a cable solution because this OTA stuff is too finiky. Regardless, I bought a cable box so I could trash the "rabit ears".

Thanks for your hopeful input.

S.

[jonaslasky]

Guys,

You did recognize you're writing in an ATI multimedia care forum, did you? With X1k series we score 108 points in HQV Video tests, so I don't see (and like) why any recommendations for NVidia hardware should be discussed here.
Have a look at http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ty/default.asp , and you will see ATI has the better video quality anyway. And we don't charge extra for quality, if you know what I mean

So this is how you make ATI guys come out of the woodwork eh? OK Nvidia.. Nvidia... Nvidia! LOL

Seriously, do tell us how ATI's VideoShader HD stacks up against Nvidia's PureVideo. Most forums are pretty murky about it. I picked up a 9600XT Pro once but I returned it because it refused to do letterboxed video. It kept converting 16:9 to 4:3 and if there was a way to defeat that, it sure wasNOT very easy to find. I just can't understand why ATI would make it so hard to work their otherwise finely made products. The same way it is soooo hard to tweak settings on the Theater 550 Pro. We've all been complaining about how it's so hard just to change the SHARPNESS setting on it for months and months and months now.

Ok I clicked on that link you provided, and was disappointed to see that the comparison is very lopsided in ATI's favor. They're comparing the GeForce 6600 with ATI X1800 with the latest Catalyst software. I wouldn't call that a fair comparison. On price point alone, Nvidia would handily win. Regardless of fairness or lack thereof, the claimed ATI superiority is very questionable. In some tests, the much cheaper Nvidia card actually did better.

Jonas

[jonaslasky]

Great news! When you record HDTV, what resolution does your program use and how much space does it use on your HD? Sorry to get off topic.

S.

I think resolution is determined by the broadcast... nothing you can do about that. The stream is preformatted digitally, so you just receive the bits as is. The only thing you can do is transcode it after recording..... and that's CPU intensive for sure.... not something you'd want to do as you receive it.

Jonas

[Mike K]

There is no unfair point in comparison, because the score in HQV is exactly the same on X1600XT. This would be the competitor for GF6600 pricewise. The editors tested what they had, X1800 has two dual-link DVI ports of course. Using a GeForce 7800 GT(X) wouldn't improve the 68 points for our competition as well, btw.

Im not saying PureVideo is a bad thing, but NVidia charges you 20$ extra for having better quality MPEG playback. I find this rediculous. Neither VideoShader nor Avivo compete against PureVideo, PureVideo is purely an improved de-interlacing for MPEG2, nothing more.
Avivo with X1k series adapters gives you far more than that. However, 108 is close to optimum score (130) for HQV. There is only one DVD player (3500$) that scores 130. Isn't it nice that you can come close to that experience for less than 200$ with X1600?

[hrlslcbr]

Hey Mike, does the X1300 (Pro) score the same 108 in the benchmark?
Good thing that ATI didn't charge more for Avivo, better de-interlacing for MPEG-2, H.264 acceleration, etc...

[satnav4]

I think resolution is determined by the broadcast... nothing you can do about that. The stream is preformatted digitally, so you just receive the bits as is. The only thing you can do is transcode it after recording..... and that's CPU intensive for sure.... not something you'd want to do as you receive it.

Jonas

Pehhaps the better question is how much space does an HDTV recording consume?

S.

[Mike K]

I didn't check X1300 personally, but I wouldn't know any reason it scores less. We focussed on X1600 as a mid-range card that serves both, gaming and video. Since X1300 is the same physics, it should have same capabilities...

[hrlslcbr]

I didn't check X1300 personally, but I wouldn't know any reason it scores less. We focussed on X1600 as a mid-range card that serves both, gaming and video. Since X1300 is the same physics, it should have same capabilities...

Cheers.

[jonaslasky]

Pehhaps the better question is how much space does an HDTV recording consume?

S.

I think someone's already talked about this earlier... and it does take a lot of space. At around 9 GB per hour, it's a perfect candidate for DivX transcoding.... or just put them on DVDs.

Jonas

[Octavean]

Interesting,….

CyberLink H.264 Player Trail for ATI,…..

Only $14.95 for H.264 decoder and AAC decoder

OK, so I guess I don’t understand, I thought this was supposed to be free,…!?!

http://www.cyberlink.com/cinema/ati/.../enu/index.jsp

***edit***

For reference:

A Radeon X1000 based card, Catalyst 5.13 or higher drivers and Cyberlink H.264 Decoder are need. So I guess my question should be does the Cyberlink H.264 decoder come bundled with X1000 based cards and if not is there a free download for X1000 owners?

[AIW_VID_FAN]

My AIW 1800XL Install CD sent me the H.264 link that Octavean posted.
Looks like ATI does in fact want another $15.00 for an advertised feature !

Lets recap the year 2005 for me as a Loyal ATI customer...
My $150.00 Elite 550, $150.00 HDTV Wonder and $200.00 AIWX600 wasnt enough...?
Its been over 9 Months with No support from MMC for using these 3 ATI products, they almost would not even co-exist in the same PC for a while.
I must be nuts , but maybe.....
If I just spend another $430.00 on the latest and greatest AIW X1800XL, It will all be worth it... right ?
So I just bought a new AIW X1800XL (with MMC 9.10), and NOW IT ALL WORKS...LIKE IT ALWAYS SHOULD HAVE at least it does with the AIW X1800XL,guess I will have to retire the X600, oh well its only money.
MMC 9.10 DOES support All 3 cards and does so nicely.
The TV App integrates all 5 available tuners and multi-view works for the first time in history for me anyway !
(I have had many AIWs, must have bought at least 7 over the years).
Thats $930.00 this year ATI , Customer support SUCKS by the way (sorry but true)
and now you want $15.00 more ??!!
Why am I wasting my time and money ? why am I sitting here typing this ? Why are we all here ?
I may have to return the AIW X1800XL, hard to justify the money.
I just read of the release of a $200 AIW2006 PCIX(X1300) vesion, shipping with MMC 9.12.
also going to look into a GeForce..
all done.
Happy new year ATI

[Chippy]

My Sapphire Theatrix seems to have a problem syncing with very high APL pictures. The PQ and sync are fine normally, but when the picture goes all white, it tends to lose sync.

Is this a problem anyone else has experienced, or do you think I have a defective card?

Cheers

Chip

EDIT: Sorry, I should say this is when viewing or capturing video from the s-video input. I don't know if it does it from the oboard tuner as I don't have an aerial.

[satnav4]

My Sapphire Theatrix seems to have a problem syncing with very high APL pictures. The PQ and sync are fine normally, but when the picture goes all white, it tends to lose sync.

Is this a problem anyone else has experienced, or do you think I have a defective card?

Cheers

Chip

EDIT: Sorry, I should say this is when viewing or capturing video from the s-video input. I don't know if it does it from the oboard tuner as I don't have an aerial.

What are APL pictures? I have a Theatrix and can test the issue for you. Svideo is my preferred input method when recording scrambled video from my cable box. Otherwise, I use the coax and internal tuner. Either way, I have had no sync issues.

S.

[Chippy]

Sorry, APL = Average Picture Level. Basically high APL means "bright", which is what I guess I should have said in the first place ;-)

[BEANFro Elite]

This Video-In card, anyone know where I can get a standard PCI one, not the PCI-e as I haven't quite jumped onto the bandwagon yet...