New ATI Tuner Card.

[Mike K]

Chippy,

what does it look like when you get a sync problem? Sound and pic? Tearing on your Monitor? Does it get in sync again, what ever doesn't run right? In case not, does a channel switch fix it or does it persist? Without this basic info it's hard to say what's the problem...

[Chippy]

Hey Mike,

Sorry, I haven't been very clear, have I. I meant the card would lose video sync with the signal - tearing on screen etc. The proper picture is restored when the picture levels drop and the card can sync again.

Anyway, I seem to have solved the problem: it looks like the s-video output on my Sky+ box is defective. I tried using a composite video connection and the problem went away. So then I tried taking RGB out from the Sky box and using an RGB to s-video converter box into the 550's s-video input, and again, it works perfectly. So it looks like there is something in the s-video output from the Sky+ box that is no quite right.

Thanks for your help guys.

Chip

[5lab]

have you tried setting the sky+ box to delibrately output s-video? in fact, are you even sure its capable of doing such a thing?? afaik it would have to be in a setting because 1/2 of s-video and composite run on the same pair of pins over a scart connection, so you have to let both sender and reciever know which is going on..

[Chippy]

Sky+ boxes have the round 4-pin s-video sockets, so there's nothing to select or swicth.

Cheers

Chip

[jonaslasky]

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...

Don't know where you're shopping, but all the ones I've seen so far are plain old PCI bus. In fact, if you want one, I'll sell you one of mine for cheap. After buying a very inexpensive HDTV tuner card and finding out that I can can get all kinds of digital and HDTV programming off-the-air, I've just about lost all interest in the Theater 550 Pro. What with all the bugs and unkept promises from ATI... who needs it. Using my HDTV tuner is great. Even after transferring my recordings onto DVDs, picture quality is so much better than that overhyped Theater 550 Pro. Even recording non-HDTV content through my digital tuner is better than cable. Very clean, sharp, unsoftened. Unlike video from the 550, which tends to be soft. It's made worse by the fact that the 550 has a very limited sharpness adjustment range.

BTW... I bought my digital/HDTV tuner for less than a Theater 550 card and it came with Snapstream's BeyondTV. Signals come in via a 30 something year-old UHF antenna that the previous homeowner left in the attic... so it costs me nothing to get HD programming.

Contrary to what some have said here previously, recording HDTV isn't that big a deal. It's not even 3 times the space requirement of regular MPEG-2 but it has four times the resolution and color information (not to mention better, all-digital sound). I just picked up a 160 gigabyte serial ATA hard drive (for recording videos) for less than $50 US. That will easily take care of my HD recording.

So if you have access to over-the-air HDTV programming (a lot of people in the US do) just leapfrog plain old NTSC tuner cards. They're going to be irrelevant soon.

Jonas

[satnav4]

Don't know where you're shopping, but all the ones I've seen so far are plain old PCI bus. In fact, if you want one, I'll sell you one of mine for cheap. After buying a very inexpensive HDTV tuner card and finding out that I can can get all kinds of digital and HDTV programming off-the-air, I've just about lost all interest in the Theater 550 Pro. What with all the bugs and unkept promises from ATI... who needs it. Using my HDTV tuner is great. Even after transferring my recordings onto DVDs, picture quality is so much better than that overhyped Theater 550 Pro. Even recording non-HDTV content through my digital tuner is better than cable. Very clean, sharp, unsoftened. Unlike video from the 550, which tends to be soft. It's made worse by the fact that the 550 has a very limited sharpness adjustment range.

BTW... I bought my digital/HDTV tuner for less than a Theater 550 card and it came with Snapstream's BeyondTV. Signals come in via a 30 something year-old UHF antenna that the previous homeowner left in the attic... so it costs me nothing to get HD programming.

Contrary to what some have said here previously, recording HDTV isn't that big a deal. It's not even 3 times the space requirement of regular MPEG-2 but it has four times the resolution and color information (not to mention better, all-digital sound). I just picked up a 160 gigabyte serial ATA hard drive (for recording videos) for less than $50 US. That will easily take care of my HD recording.

So if you have access to over-the-air HDTV programming (a lot of people in the US do) just leapfrog plain old NTSC tuner cards. They're going to be irrelevant soon.

Jonas

Please remind me what HDTV tuner you bought.

Thanks

S.

[jonaslasky]

Please remind me what HDTV tuner you bought.

Thanks

S.

I bought a KWorld ATSC ove-the-air (OTA) tuner card, because it was on sale at local geek store called Fry's Electronics (I don't think they have stores outside CA) for US$69.95 with BTV. But if I had to get one at full retail, I would choose the DVICO bundles.

http://store.snapstream.com/fusionhdtv-gold.html

From what I've read, they seem to have a better transcoding software in case you want to put all that recording on DVDs. It's also capable of tuning digital CABLE channels... which should be a big plus for a lot of people. I've read a lot of good reviews of their software. Good transcoding is very important when it comes time to archive your videos and you don't enjoy waiting for hours and hours or leaving your computer on all night.

From what I understand, a lot of HDTV tuners are capable of tuning digital cable channels but that function is often turned off. This is true of KWorld and HDTV Wonder from ATI.... not surprisingly because they use the same Philips chip... along with a few other tuner cards.

Jonas

[Octavean]

jonaslasky,….

I have 2x ATI HDTV Wonder cards and 2x Theater 550 Pro cards. I have one HDTV Wonder + one Theater 550 Pro in one MCE 2K5 system AKA System64 and one HDTV Wonder + one Theater 550 Pro in another MCE 2K5 system AKA System64-X2. I like both the T550P and the HDTV Wonder not to mention MCE 2K5. In fact I like my setup so much that I really haven’t gotten around to trying “Beyond TV 4” yet. I liked (or have grown to like) BTV3 SE which shipped with my Visiontek Xtasy Theater 550 Pro MCE Edition card but I am really attached to my current setup as is.

To put it simply I have no issues worth mentioning with either of my T550P cards (at the moment),….not even the conspicuous absence of MMC for T550P users,…since I much prefer MCE 2K5.

Now then, as long as your cards are NOT PAL versions and are in working order (not damaged in any way shape or form) , I’d be willing to take them off your hands. How does $40 (USA) each sound?

[jonaslasky]

Now then, as long as your cards are NOT PAL versions and are in working order (not damaged in any way shape or form) , I’d be willing to take them off your hands. How does $40 (USA) each sound?

Sounds like a good enough deal... but let me think about that for a while. I'll have to weigh how much CABLE HDTV programming I will be getting in the NEAR future. Unfortunately cable companies have been very slow on that.

Jonas

[nexland]

ATI MMC 9.10, here.

[SHSPVR]

So nexland dose it that now work with ATI 550?.

[nexland]

It's working with my Powercolor Theatre 550 Pro.

[SHSPVR]

Cool it work even under Windows 200 Pro nice &

[jonaslasky]

Cool it work even under Windows 200 Pro nice &

Please give us your reviews guys. Is there a compelling reason why the rest of us should upgrade to MMC 9.10? Is the sharpness adjustment better?

Jonas

[theatrix]

Heres my review,

Graphedit, iuvcr and many others all offer the same and possibly more functionality / quality than mmc. Once you have spent hours trying to get a tv signal it does produce a very good pc picture but if, like me, you wanted to access the comb filters and noise reduction for video editing your out of luck because they appear to be permanently disabled and so far there is not one piece of software available that will let you adjust them.

If I just wanted a tv tunerI would be very happy with this card but the tuner is of no use to me as I dont watch tv on the pc.

Ive spent 4 days on this and ive almost got to the stage where I send it back to the retailer.

Ati havent released an official 'theatre 550 mmc' because they are probably having problems with the chip, thats my thoughts anyway.

[jonaslasky]

Heres my review,

If I just wanted a tv tunerI would be very happy with this card but the tuner is of no use to me as I dont watch tv on the pc.

I think few of us here watch TV on their PC... well... at least not seriously. I would venture most people use their good tuner cards as recording devices. You could buy a cheap tuner card for casual goofing off at work or something... but I'm not sure that describes the members of this forum. My guess is, most of us use the TV OUT on our graphic cards to output recorded video to our TVs. For those with HDTV, they use their HDMI or DVI outputs to view HDTV on their HD-capable TVs.

But I agree with you on the other points. If MMC 9.10 doesn't improve the controls on the Theater 550 Pro... then what good is it?
You're probably right about the chip having a serious design flaw. Perhaps they were hoping everything could be fixed via software, but it turned out too severe for a software fix. Then again this could all just be a bone for Microsoft to chew on.... a concession from ATI to get the XBox 360 contract. As far as i can tell the people using MCE are happy with all the Theater 550 chip based products.

BTW what are you using your tuner card for?

Jonas