New ATI Tuner Card.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
You guys just crack me up. Ah the Nvidia DualTV MCE..... I honestly don't even know where to begin on that one. For now, lets put aside the fact that it came out a year and a half after Theater 550 Pro and it costs twice as much. I have heard so many of you bashing anyone who says they're happy with their Theater 550 Pro with MCE because you wanted more advanced stuff from it and didn't want an MCE card. Now you're actually considering a card that's REALLY meant for MCE (yes it has MCE in its name and it doesn't come with any other TV tuner app). I'm willing to look past that as well. Now lets get to the juicy details here. I've actually had this DualTV card almost since it first came out and I've personally done a lot of testing and comparisons on it. I'll tell you guys honestly, if any one of you had this card for one day, you'd have 3 times as many issues/complaints as you do with the Theater 550 Pro. Lets me break this down for you:
- Their "3D" comb filter is a joke and isn't nearly as good as our year and a half old one. I have done lots of testing (aimed at the comb filter) with clips similar to the ones you see in that review and in most of them the Theater 550 had a far superior quality.
- The "adjustable filters" you're so excited about because you don't need to use GraphEdit, well it's not even comparable to the adjustments that we offer. First of all you have to use MCE to make those adjustments and secondly did any of you read the review of what these "adjustments" really are? Their Color Separation (3d comb) "adjustments" consist of either "On" or "Off". That's about it. Their Noise Reduction "adjustments" consist of High, Medium, or Low and quoting that review:

"Medium is the default and with good reason: I found Low to be too noisy, and High made things look like the TV had been smeared with Vaseline. "

So I think we can safely say they offer no real "adjustments". I have more to say that I'm just not at liberty to do so right now, so I'll leave it at that. Honestly, you can believe me or not, but I'd actually encourage any of you to go out and buy one of those cards (hold on to the receipt though). Once you have it, I can describe some simple test scenarios you can try to really see that it's quality is far inferior to even our Theater 550 Pro.

[BFever]

Mike,

We have all been very patient with you and ATI looking for any tidbits to tweak or massage the experience with the 550. I actually would like to know the following:

1) If there is no chance of fixing the sound issue is there something we can do to alleviate it like via a registry or batch file that might boost the sound for that particular app. I am currently using MCE 2005 but maybe there is another angle that could be approached like say the sound driver on the mobo or Audigy for instance.

2) Will we see a revision history on the drivers after .134? I think this is very important expecially for users that have a solid config and then those next set of drivers break it whether it's the drivers fault or not.

3) I actually own three 550's and I am wondering if there is a way that you could confirm that I stay with using two 550's vs. NVidia's new Dual TV MCE card.

Thanks,
BFever

Uh MMike you skipped the 2 first questions. Could you answer them for us?

Thanks,
BFever

[SHSPVR]

Mike did you read jonaslasky post?.

times as many issues/complaints as you do with the Theater 550 Pro

That odd some SageTV and MCE user that got one also have one of the falling other card ATI or Hauppauge or both and all of them said they tought the DualTV look better to them.

Mike I don't have one and if I did have one I see if the DualTV is really good as people say becuases I my self would do a ture side by side from same show recording and in screenshot bmp that done by Womble MPEG-VCR RAW spanshot mode in 1% comp jpg file not the printscreen key way being that the way matt did it but I base it on his screenshot the DualTV to me look better to me.

I'm not the bashing the 550
But when it to Cartoon Content the ATI 550 dose do fall short on that job which give a grainess look when it should be more of a soild color base on his screenshot but I kind wonder if he using a old set of drivers or tuner.

And for me the sharpness on my setting dosen't even come to older PVR 250.
Mike you skip my questions

[spacded]

...........WALKS IN FROM STAGE LEFT!.........


SATNAV........... he loves me he loves me not he loves me etc etc

Personally I just come here for a laugh now and then, i do like Mikes Ballsy take on the NVIDIA Dual TV card.

Its very funny how you guys are now talking up a card with MCE!! in the title.

Very Nice retort MIKE. I am a v happy camper with my 550Pro and MCE this is well known, i just hope the 650 will be even better for MCE users.

SATNAV thats it you have broke my heart too many times i dont wanna see you again, hear from you again and you can take your ring back, .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ............................................CALL ME!.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi everyone,
Alright a few points here:
- First let's all try to remain civil and professional in our posts (no I didn't remove any, but some of us..... are getting a bit carried away)
- SHSPVR, I didn't skip your questions, I just haven't gotten to them yet, but don't worry we'll get there. Can you do me a favour and remind me where CTHELPER.exe is from?
- BFever, again didn't skip, but didn't get to yet. I'm not sure of a way to improve the volume issue. Like I said, I'm not saying it's never getting fixed, but I'm also not promising a fix any time soon. I'm doing my best to push them, but there's only so much I can do. I do agree with you that we need release notes for Theater 550 drivers like we have for the general Catalyst package and I'm talking to people about getting those.

Now, one more key point here. One of the head driver guys knows that I'm dealing with some "advanced" customers and he asked if I had some feedback for him about picture/video quality. The team is currently working to improve that. I don't recall you guys bringing up any specific issues, but if you noticed any, NOW is the time. We can really get stuff looked at quickly. So any comments are welcome.

[SHSPVR]

CTHELPER.exe is for the Creative Sound Blaster card like the Live, Audigy and Audigy2 and this utility program that is used as an interface by third party software vendors and manufacturers to integrate their software with Creative soundcards and drivers.

In fact this error message in the CTHELPER.RPT

********************************

Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Fault address: 77FCB0C8 03:000010C8 C:\WINNT\system32\ntdll.dll

Registers:
EAX:66392D35
EBX:00000203
ECX:362D3065
EDX:002F86A0
ESI:002F86A0
EDI:002F0000
CS:EIP:001B:77FCB0C8
SS:ESP:0023:0012F870 EBP:0012FA3C
DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:0038 GS:0000
Flags:00210246

Call stack:
Address Frame Logical addr Module
77FCB0C8 0012FA3C 0003:000010C8 C:\WINNT\system32\ntdll.dll
78001532 0012FA7C 0001:00000532 C:\WINNT\system32\MSVCRT.DLL

Only dose it with 550 drivers

[jonaslasky]

I'm not the bashing the 550
But when it to Cartoon Content the ATI 550 dose do fall short on that job which give a grainess look when it should be more of a soild color base on his screenshot but I kind wonder if he using a old set of drivers or tuner.

And for me the sharpness on my setting dose even come to to older PVR 250.
Mike you skip my questions

The T550 suffers from just a bit of that smeared vaseline effect ALL THE TIME, and you can't do a thing about it. It's not just me who's saying that. Lots of people have said this 100 pages or so ago. ..... and even if DualTV is absolutely terrible.... what does that have to do with with the good video and functionality that ATI promised and NEVER delivered. Let's not lose sight of that.

Jonas

[thethinman]

I don't recall you guys bringing up any specific issues, but if you noticed any, NOW is the time. We can really get stuff looked at quickly. So any comments are welcome.

To refresh your memory Mike see posts #2141 & 2146. Can or will anything be done via future drivers for the Theater 550 Pro, so that the Variable Bitrate video is truley variable? Or will it just stay the way it is now, stuck with a very narrow range of Bitrate fluctuation?

[hrlslcbr]

To refresh your memory Mike see posts #2141 & 2146. Can or will anything be done via future drivers for the Theater 550 Pro, so that the Variable Bitrate video is truley variable? Or will it just stay the way it is now, stuck with a very narrow range of Bitrate fluctuation?

Yes. The only program that gives me real variable bitrate is that tv plug-in for winamp.
One picture quality problem would be the 'soft' look the video has; and that the 3D comb filter doesn't 'work' immediately, but 'misses' some frames.

[satnav4]

...........WALKS IN FROM STAGE LEFT!.........


SATNAV........... he loves me he loves me not he loves me etc etc

Personally I just come here for a laugh now and then, i do like Mikes Ballsy take on the NVIDIA Dual TV card.

Its very funny how you guys are now talking up a card with MCE!! in the title.

Very Nice retort MIKE. I am a v happy camper with my 550Pro and MCE this is well known, i just hope the 650 will be even better for MCE users.

SATNAV thats it you have broke my heart too many times i dont wanna see you again, hear from you again and you can take your ring back, .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ............................................CALL ME!.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Anyway, consider this my call.

Back to the card--If the effort that went into the testing and bashing of the Nvidia card by ATI went into fixing 550 issues, I would have all the volume and sharpness I need from my 550. It sounds like Mike is making the effort however, and I appreciate that.

S.

[spacded]

Now & then Faces have a sort of Clay Like structure in Live TV?I have seen this discussed?somewhere Before?Why does this happen & can it?be sorted

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
I will look into the bitrate thing myself and see what kind of results I get and then discuss it with the driver guys. Regarding CTHELPER, I don't have a Creative sound card here that I can try, but I will be discussing this with our QA. So any picture/video quality issues feedback? Just so you realize, this ship will be sailing soon and the more detailed a description of an issue you can give me the much higher chance it will be looked into and/or fixed. I know sometimes it's hard to say exactly what's wrong with an image, but do your best. Any feedback welcome.

hrlslcbr, how many frames would you say the 3d comb filter (if that's in fact what causes the problem) "misses"? If it's for a split second at the start of the recording, that's considered normal and wouldn't be treated as a problem.

[BFever]

Just so you realize, this ship will be sailing soon and the more detailed a description of an issue you can give me the much higher chance it will be looked into and/or fixed.

Are you leaving us MMike?

BFever

[hrlslcbr]

hrlslcbr, how many frames would you say the 3d comb filter (if that's in fact what causes the problem) "misses"? If it's for a split second at the start of the recording, that's considered normal and wouldn't be treated as a problem.

Yeah, it happens when it starts recording. I actually thought it was normal but I said it anyway.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Don't worry I'm not leaving yet. What I meant was the opportunity to get picture/video quality issues looked at quickly was sailing away. Now regarding this bitrate thing, I've done some testing with GBPVR. I did notice that the base rate changes are reflected accurately (whether it was set high or low), but the variance isn't that large. Similar to earlier posts, I set my base to 5M and peak to about 9M and I put on some news with some sports and when I watched the recording it never went above 6.25M (and never went below about 4.8M). Ideally it probably should vary more, but I'm not sure how easy this will be to resolve. I spoke to some driver guys about this and they're not sure what can be done because we passed the MCE certification for VBR, so obviously it was good enough to get the "Designed for Windows MCE" logo. So yes, I personally would want to see it vary more, but I can't make any promises that we can get something done about this any time soon. I'll keep you guys posted as there are further discussions I need to have regarding this.

[thethinman]

Now regarding this bitrate thing, I've done some testing with GBPVR. I did notice that the base rate changes are reflected accurately (whether it was set high or low), but the variance isn't that large. Similar to earlier posts, I set my base to 5M and peak to about 9M and I put on some news with some sports and when I watched the recording it never went above 6.25M (and never went below about 4.8M). Ideally it probably should vary more, but I'm not sure how easy this will be to resolve. I spoke to some driver guys about this and they're not sure what can be done because we passed the MCE certification for VBR, so obviously it was good enough to get the "Designed for Windows MCE" logo. So yes, I personally would want to see it vary more, but I can't make any promises that we can get something done about this any time soon. I'll keep you guys posted as there are further discussions I need to have regarding this.

Thanks for looking into this Mike. I hope something can be done so that the bitrate does vary more.