New ATI Tuner Card.

[Multimedia Mike]

duren: try winamp TV plug-in. I can record at high bitrates with it.

Hi duren,
Did you try this? Also what app were you using before where it wouldn't properly set the bitrate? Don't forget if you set the rate you want in GraphEdit and then run some application, it can send it's own settings to the board rather than the ones you set in GraphEdit.

[spacded]

personally Mike i dont believe you are really from ATI!
but if you are GO NOW! your wasting your time here!

ATI made it clear that the 550 pro was for MCE, i have been using perfectly for over a year now in my MCE 2005k system and it has NEVER missed a recording and the quality of live TV and recorded is superb.

I popped back here after months and couldnt believe this topic was still going. Really people need to get a life and move on.
Its an MCE card end of story! and its CHEEP!
Get out now Mike b4 its too late

[jonaslasky]

Perhaps what ATI can't do yahoo can.

http://go.connect.yahoo.com/go/tv/get_started

Check out the supported tuner cards:

http://go.connect.yahoo.com/go/tv/dvr

Jonas

[hrlslcbr]

personally Mike i dont believe you are really from ATI!
but if you are GO NOW! your wasting your time here!

ATI made it clear that the 550 pro was for MCE, i have been using perfectly for over a year now in my MCE 2005k system and it has NEVER missed a recording and the quality of live TV and recorded is superb.

I popped back here after months and couldnt believe this topic was still going. Really people need to get a life and move on.
Its an MCE card end of story! and its CHEEP!
Get out now Mike b4 its too late

The card is not meant to be used only with MCE; you can clearly read in the box that it's compatible with the normal windows XP too.
If it was only for MCE why would it have support for capturing to uncompressed video?
The card is a great product, and if you've been happy with it, leave this place. This is a thread about problems with the card; if you don't have any, stop wasting your (and our) time please.

By the way, the card had some pretty big problems with 'I' frames in the MPEG-2 stream it produces, and they are incompatible with some programs. That IS a problem. If you don't see it, try not to look for it, because you'll get disappointed with the MPEG-2 quality.

And please, don't tell Mike to go away, he's trying to help here (that's what you are NOT doing here).

Cheers.

[jonaslasky]

The card is not meant to be used only with MCE; you can clearly read in the box that it's compatible with the normal windows XP too.
If it was only for MCE why would it have support for capturing to uncompressed video?
The card is a great product, and if you've been happy with it, leave this place. This is a thread about problems with the card; if you don't have any, stop wasting your (and our) time please.

By the way, the card had some pretty big problems with 'I' frames in the MPEG-2 stream it produces, and they are incompatible with some programs. That IS a problem. If you don't see it, try not to look for it, because you'll get disappointed with the MPEG-2 quality.

And please, don't tell Mike to go away, he's trying to help here (that's what you are NOT doing here).

Cheers.

Ignore Braindead...err... I mean SpaceDead. Obviously he's not a videophile. Not enough neurons to discern the difference between acceptable and good video. He's lucky,... no brain, no pain.

Anyway. the new yahoo TV application is fabulous. The EPG is superior to anything I've tried so far... including the Beyond TV I paid for, which is my favorite. Yahoo might soon replace it however. It works fabulously with the T 550. Channel change is very quick. I would recommend it to anybody. Very easy to set up. GBPVR which is also free is very pretty, but not that easy to use. Set up with yahoo is amazingly painless.

Jonas

[Octavean]

The card is not meant to be used only with MCE; you can clearly read in the box that it's compatible with the normal windows XP too.
If it was only for MCE why would it have support for capturing to uncompressed video?
The card is a great product, and if you've been happy with it, leave this place. This is a thread about problems with the card; if you don't have any, stop wasting your (and our) time please.

By the way, the card had some pretty big problems with 'I' frames in the MPEG-2 stream it produces, and they are incompatible with some programs. That IS a problem. If you don't see it, try not to look for it, because you'll get disappointed with the MPEG-2 quality.

And please, don't tell Mike to go away, he's trying to help here (that's what you are NOT doing here).

Cheers

While I basically agree with what was said I cannot agree with the statement that “this thread is about problems with the card”. That’s just not an accurate statement if used globally. I read this entire thread and even those of whom that have only read the first post by myth (the original poster) should be able to say that this thread originated before the release of T550P based products into the retail channel.

How exactly can a thread be created about the problems of a product and user woes be created before anyone was able to evaluate said product???

No this thread was initially about general information about a pre-released product, product overall feature set, expectations,…ect,..

Once the product was in the retail channel it matured to add user experience, tips and trix, general info and so on,…

And finally troubleshooting was added but general belly-aching was present from time to time along with posts of a humorous nature and the odd fight which added no real value and served to take up space in what was already a huge thread.

I think this thread serves as a great source of information about the T550P product and it may yield some insight to the as of yet to be released Theater 650 Pro (supposedly beta drivers for the T650P have been released or leaked). It would be a shame to see it fall by the wayside or locked.

BTW, the T550P is not just a MCE card that much is clear.

[hrlslcbr]

No this thread was initially about general information about a pre-released product, product overall feature set, expectations,…ect,..

I've read all the posts in this thread, and I agree that initially it was about information on the theatre 550 pro chip.
Now almost ALL posts are about problems with the cards, fights between members and that kind of stuff.

Yes, this thread might be informative to someone looking for information on these cards, but for the last weeks, this is nothing more than a list of gripes and problems.
I like this thread because at least ATI has some people here trying to help, and wouldn't like it to be closed because we keep fighting and some members act like little kids.

[duren]

Hi duren,
Did you try this? Also what app were you using before where it wouldn't properly set the bitrate? Don't forget if you set the rate you want in GraphEdit and then run some application, it can send it's own settings to the board rather than the ones you set in GraphEdit.

Mike, I tried it and it does appear to be the first program that properly encodes at high bitrates. I say appear because I cannot verify with my MPEG analysis tool because the recording feature is still beta and it currently as the author put it - simply begins to write the RAW stream to the HD, meaning there is no proper MPEG encapsulation meaning every program I have tried refuses to parse the file and use it for editing claiming that it cannot open the video stream. PowerDVD does however play the file fine and does report a high bitrate.

ChrisTV had options to record at high bitrates but once connected to the ATI A/V Stream driver, the settings were never saved properly and so recordings were never reliable.

ATI MMC would always take the bitrate down to 4-5Mbps average. Once a hardware profile was set, bitrate settings were ignored and i got what I got.

PowerCinema I think recorded at a slightly higher bitrate when set to best quality 5-6/6-7 mbps but the software was SEVERLY limited in general, not to mention buggy but worst of all still captured sub-standard quality video (the microblocking we were talking about earlier).

The reason I've wanted the high bitrate the whole time is to record mpeg2 as crisp as possible so that I can do video editing after and retain excellent quality on my clips.

Right now I see two major problems that I hope a higher bitrate will solve...
Both stand out more when video is transcoded (another layer of compression applied I guess)...

1) Blocks on even semi-fast scenes. ie someone with a green shirt starts walking fairly quickly and their shirt is blocky throughout the process. Someone turns around and blocking is fairly visible on their figure until they stop moving.

2) Paletting - I know MPEG takes advantage of what the eye doesn't see and uses tricks to fool the eye in order to save space, but some scenes are simply too paletted, like taking someone's face in true color and making a gif.. you will be able to see the different layers of beige / pink. It's not THAT drastic, but you get the idea, it's noticeable.

Mike I know the first reaction is well, you're recompressing video, and your bitrate is too low, but I can tell you that I've worked with video for years and the way I work hasn't changed. The only thing that's changed is that I went from a TV Wonder Pro PCI to an ELITE and those are the first two things I noticed when I started exploring the new card.

The only thing I did differently between the two cards was go from using say using the software XVID codec @ 10mps /w no compression/motion compensation on the TVW Pro capturing to using the MPEG2 hardware capturing on the TVW Elite.

I captured the same 2h home video in MMC with the hardware encoder @ full (but got the old locked bitrate) and a software codec (xvid @ full) on the Elite. I checked by isolating the same frame from both videos. The software codec did a better job, the image looked better. When watching the video overall on a tv, I could not see the paletting or blocking as evident with the hardware capture.

I'm hoping the lack of high bitrate is the explanation for these two issues I have been experiencing.

I would like to do more testing to see if it's a bitrate or hardware issue but I either need a functional MMC that respects the rates I choose or the tv plugin that writes a properly compliant mpeg stream.

I think the tv plugin is cool but I shouldn't need to go third party for proper support and besides the fact, I would prefer a stand alone program instead of a winamp plugin, which translates into MMC, verbatim So I'm really hoping there's full support real soon, I'm sure I'm not the only one that's been waiting a very long time to take advantage of this card in a non-MCE environment.

[hrlslcbr]

duren: If you want great quality, you can capture to uncompressed (or compressed with lossless compression) avi. I've always had good results that way.
BTW, DGIndex opens my recorded files, and reports high bitrates.

[Octavean]

hrlslcbr, I’m sure we can agree to disagree on that point then.

This thread was not in its inception, nor its interim “about problems with the card” and even if it has recently degenerated into that (and I am not saying that it has mind you) IMO it would still be incorrect to suggest flatly that that it is simply “about problems with the card”.

Here is an example to illustrate this concept:

An ancient civilization created a vast aqueduct that is still partially functional. Descendants of this culture still use it to get drinking water for themselves, live stock and for irrigation. Tourists and travelers use the aqueduct as a toilet and to write graffiti. Local drug dealers use it to traffic drugs down some of the pipes.

Question:

Is the aqueduct’s purpose to provide drinking water and irrigation for crops?

Is the aqueduct’s purpose to provide convenient toilet facilities for tourists and a place to write for budding graffiti artists?

Or is the aqueduct’s purpose to provide a secure means for local drug dealers to traffic drugs?

These are not trick questions. In a very real way, “all of the above” are correct but if only one answer were needed it would likely be best to answer with what the aqueduct was originally built for,…..and that is “drinking water and irrigation”.

One can easily see how the tourists would think that the aqueduct was only a place to relieve one’s self or write graffiti and why the local drug dealers would think that the aqueduct was only for drug trafficking since that’s the only thing they use it for. This however doesn’t change the aqueduct’s reason for existing but rather adds additional uses.

I’m a MCE 2K5 user and I have no noteworthy issues with either of my T550P cards. The only real issue I can attribute to the card that concerned me was the low volume issue and even that has been addressed to my satisfaction in drivers some time ago.

This doesn’t mean I agree with spacded because I don’t and the T550P is NOT a MCE only (or designed for) card.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hello,
I would just like ask everyone to take a deep breath and calm down a little bit. First I'd like everyone to please try to be as respectful to other uses as possible and please refrain from any name calling, etc. Please keep in mind people are here with the purpose of getting help or helping others and that's the atmosphere I'd like to work in. To clarify some previous comments:
1) Don't worry I'm not running away
2) Theater 550 based cards work great on MCE and I'm glad people are enjoying them
3) Theater 550 based cards don't "require" MCE and while you can't expect them to work with every piece of software you can find, there are certain applications that do support them and should work fine (ATI provides MMC for example)

If someone has some new issues they want to discuss and are worried they'd be drowned out in this thread, I'd like to remind people to feel free to start a new thread about any specific new issues. Now back here, I have been following up on some of the issues we talked about earlier and so will give some feedback shortly

[jonaslasky]

Hello,

1) Don't worry I'm not running away
2) Theater 550 based cards work great on MCE and I'm glad people are enjoying them
3) Theater 550 based cards don't "require" MCE and while you can't expect them to work with every piece of software you can find, there are certain applications that do support them and should work fine (ATI provides MMC for example)

I'm glad to hear you're not running away Mike.

I can understand why the more esoteric properties of video encoding might have been brushed aside initially, but surely your engineers (and even your managers) MUST have noticed the unusually faint sound output from the chip the very first time they tested it. It's not that hard to discern. No matter what software you use with the chip, it's the same story. It's hard for me to imagine that this anomaly never entered discussions at ATI. It's equally hard for me to imagine that no one ever offered an explanation or proposed a fix. At the very least somebody MUST have said "OOOOOPS! we made a big error and there's nothing we can do about it now".

Are you in any position to tell us something about this at the very least? This is pretty much a no brainer. One doesn't have to be an audiophile or a videophile to notice it. A lot of times when I'm forced to use my Theater 550 to record programming that's not available in HDTV, I end up thinking the audio wasn't recorded. Then I remember I have to turn up the volume because I can't hear it until I turn up to maximum.

Jonas

[hrlslcbr]

Octavean: I don't want to start a war here. I understand you and the example you wrote. It was my mistake to call this thread a 'thread of problems with the card', but when I posted that I had forgotten that it started as an informative thread.
Sorry mate .

[Octavean]

No need to apologize mate, no need at all!

In fact, if I gave the impression of being belligerent on this subject that wasn’t my intention at all. Rather my interest was in the pursuit of correctness and accuracy.

anyway,....

As I said before, I find the volume of both my T550P cards to be acceptable however it is not 100% spot on either. I have come across some info that might help shed some light on the subject here:

Setting the ATI TV Wonder Elite default volume 1

and here

Setting the ATI TV Wonder Elite default volume 2

There was also some information in this very hexus thread about a registry hack that might improve volume somewhat but since I am basically satisfied I haven’t tried either. Perhaps this is something that ATI is unwilling or unable to correct to the satisfaction of all.

BTW, I have tested the Yahoo Go TV PVR app on a system with a TV Wonder VE card and it didn’t work since the tuner card was not detected properly but then it wasn’t a supported card anyway. I don’t like to test software on my MCE PCs since everything is basically just the way I like it and I don’t want to mess it up (so no T550P testing or HDTV Wonder testing for me). However there seems to be some indication that the Yahoo Go TV PVR app is built on “Meedio”. In any case I’m sure that T550P users will have no problem with the Yahoo Go TV app. It is interesting IMO that the Yahoo Go TV app supports so few tuner cards but at least the T550P is one of them.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hello everyone,
Alright here is the latest stutus on the Theater 550 capture volume issues. I have tried it out myself and played with the capture volume (from GraphEdit). As some of you know, that settings go from 0 to 255. What I've found was it functions normally until about half way (150 or so) and then any numbers higher than that don't provide any significant volume increase. So while 150 is a lot louder than 50, 255 is not much louder than 150. So whatever linear relationship there was to these numbers and volume, seems to have broken down. I followed up with this issue and discussed it with our QA here and they have managed to replicate the issue and so it has now been forwarded to our engineering. That said, I honestly have no idea how hard it would be to fix it (if possible at all). I will however be sure to inform you of any status updates I get about this. I would like to clarify though, that the card is still very good and very usable. I set the capture volume to 150 and my PC volume to about 80% with my speakers at about 60% and I heard live TV fine. So I wouldn't say it's too quiet, but rather it can't be loud. So I ask that we leave this issue for now and focus on new things and I will be sure to keep you guys posted on any updates I get back regarding this. Keep those posts coming!

[spacded]

I’m a MCE 2K5 user and I have no noteworthy issues with either of my T550P cards. The only real issue I can attribute to the card that concerned me was the low volume issue and even that has been addressed to my satisfaction in drivers some time ago.

This doesn’t mean I agree with spacded because I don’t and the T550P is NOT a MCE only (or designed for) card.

you know u wanna agree with me!

THIS CARD WAS DESIGNED FOR MCE USAGE!

hence the people who dont have problems are MCE users! anything else is a workaround, obviously u all missed the fact that it has taken so long to get this card to work with MMC and all the half assed attempts to do so , go back a few months and read the posts!

anything other than MCE is an afterthought and the fact that you are still here 1 year after release still moaning kinda proves the point!!