New ATI Tuner Card.

[satnav4]

bluefish266

Very nice still shots. Do they do justice to the mpeg quality achievable? Are these tuner caps or S-Video caps?

Thanks

S.

[bluefish266]

The screenshots are tuner captures. I just uploaded new pics using dscaler decoder.

[exAndrzej]

...AMCap... ...bitrate... ...dolby digital......deinterlaced 60fps video capture...

Checking !

......550 support for MMC software...

That is true - the Theatrix description is not correct. You would need to ask Sapphire about the info on the box. The potential is there for support - but the biggest demand in the market is/will be for MCE compatibility so that was made top priority.

...SECAM...

Just so you know, our 'main man' for AIW in Europe is French...
More (positive) SECAM info will follow shortly !

[e.lectronick]

Does this mean that you can't capture AVI ?

No... you can always record to any of the compatible formats available - according to the recording software and codecs being used - but you will need a good CPU to handle simultaneous MPEG-2 decoding and AVI encoding at the same time

Andrzej,

So, may I infer from your message here, that the T550P captures to MPEG2 and *then* must decode in order to recapture to .avi?

I must say, that goes against what I've heard from Sapphire Tech Support. In a message from them they said:

"I believe the software program should let you select which type of file you want to recorded as directly, so I don’t think it has to be in MPEG then AVI you should be able to do it directly.

Tech"

Which one is correct? Do you bypass T550P chip when doing a software capture to .avi -thus avoiding the issue you mentioned of doing simultaneous capture/decode/recapture? Or, does the signal always get encoded as MPEG2 first, no matter what?

This is the sort of make or break question that will determine whether a lot of people will want to buy this card or not.

We really need definite specifics about this, and I've received no answers from ATI tech support (I've sent 3 emails to them using the form on the ATI webpage).

Can you use your contacts at ATI and track this one down for us, please? It would be much appreciated.

[exAndrzej]

...infer...

No inference needed

...T550P was designed with MCE firmly in mind... ...As such its native format is MPEG and not AVI...

[blakev]

What I thought too. Sapphire are being a bit thick regarding the point e.lectronic raised. Andrzej was clear as a bell.
Software will let you pick any codec installed on your system to capture a data stream. Your processor does all the work, however, and all too often unless you've got everything but processes essential to the capture shut down you can get glitches in the data: which can lead to audio desynch, among other joys.
As pointed out above, there are dedicated capture cards that will grab a stream in "a" native format: usually uncompressed (where'd I put that 400 gigs ,maxtor?)
What is exciting is a low cost tv card sending the box an already compressed stream, and in mpeg2, to boot, so all I have to do is burn it up and it'll play in 99% of dvd players, no authoring required.
Frees up quite a few evenings...unless you want to edit the stream or make custom menus: but that's an entirely different kettle of fish
I can understand the reticence, but with everyone and their dog owning dvd players/burners nowadays, hard to resist a native mpeg a/v hardware encoding solution in your tv card.

[exAndrzej]

...no authoring required...

Important point

I spent good money on a 'famous name' DVD system to sit under my TV and look pretty...

...now I wish I had bought one of those 'stick anything in me I can read it no problem' boxes from Yamaha etc

[Bilar Crais]

Important point

I spent good money on a 'famous name' DVD system to sit under my TV and look pretty...

...now I wish I had bought one of those 'stick anything in me I can read it no problem' boxes from Yamaha etc

I bought a Philips DVP642 at Walmart for about $65.00. It'll play most anything you can throw at it, with the exception of WMV's.

[e.lectronick]

No inference needed

Andrzej, It just doesn't make any sense to me what you're saying.

When you capture to .avi, you always use software to do it -avoiding any hardware encoding in the first place- no matter which card you use. That's how the ATI Theater 100 and Theater 200 chips worked, as well as Conexant Chips, etc...The notion that the T550P chip encodes the incoming audio/video signal into MPEG2 then decodes it a split second later, in order for the software program to save it as uncompressed .AVI is completely inefficient, illogical and defeats the purpose of capturing uncompressed signal. Sure, MPEG2 is the hardware's native format, but that is a seperate issue from software capture.

I looked at the ati presentation about the T550P here: http://www.ati.com/products/theater5...nchenglish.pdf
and I noticed that the signal path is as follows:
TUNER->IF DEMODULATION->ANALOG VIDEO DECODE->PREPROCESSING------->MPEG ENCODER

If you're capturing via a third party software program (which means your CPU does the work), you should be bypassing the last block (not shown, but likely the case) and going directly to the CPU for encoding while still enjoying the fancy new 3d comb filters, TB correctors, etc... Again, bypassing hardware encode is just the way all these other chips have operated in the past when doing software capture. FYI, they weren't software only capture cards. They also offered some form of hardware, or "hardware assisted" MPEG2 capture which was bypassed when capturing to .avi

Software capture means exactly that. Software only. No hardware involved except your CPU. No 550 Pro chip encoding at all. Given this, the quality of the capture does indeed depend on how powerful your system is. No argument there.

MPEG2 is a lossy codec, which means that once compressed, the information discarded in the process cannot be retrieved. Your assertion that (with a sufficiently powerful system) you could capture a better .avi than with previous ATI Theater chips seems extremely unlikely given these circumstances. The greater likelihood is that you could capture better .avi with an AIW 9800Pro than with a Theatrix or TV Wonder Elite card -given a sufficiently powerful system. Not only would you have AGP 8x speed compared to PCI speed, but high quality uncompressed (and therefore no truncated information or artifacts) software capture of the signal rather than having to go through hardware compression/decompression first.

It sounds a lot like the erroneous notion that if you record a tv show to VHS tape, then burn a DVD of that recording you can expect the results to be DVD quality. You just can't. While I agree that the MPEG2 encoder of the T550P chip is excellent, if what you're saying is true, then the limitation of the signal quality will always be the T550P chip's codec and not any codec you choose to use to capture the .avi further along the signal path. Just like the limitation would have been the VHS tape you used to originally record your TV show before burning it to DVD. The best DVD burner in the world would not make the recording any better than VHS quality.

Now, all that being said, and with due respect to you, I think you must be wrong. My suspicion is that *YES* indeed, when doing software capture, you do bypass the MPEG2 encode/decode process in the last block of the signal path. Call me crazy, but I seriously doubt any designer would design a chip to do it the other way.

Please understand, I mean no disrespect, but the Sapphire Tech crew makes more sense about this. They agree that software capture bypasses hardware encode entirely. Since I haven't heard any full explanation to the contrary from ATI Tech Support, I'm inclined to doubt any other interpretation.

Unfortunately, ATI Tech support has not seen fit to respond with an answer thus far. This is disheartening. Sapphire has answered every question I've asked immediately. Initially, I wanted to go straight to the source for the truth, but ATI is somehow unavailable for comment when posed the question through their own provided channels. It's very frustrating, but somehow reviewers like at CNET.com manage to get the right information when testing a product. Perhaps we'll just have to wait until they test out this chip on their own.

-Erik.

[hrlslcbr]

The potential is there for support - but the biggest demand in the market is/will be for MCE compatibility so that was made top priority.

So compatibility with MMC is still possible? (in a future version of the program)
BTW, have you tried using AMCap for capturing?
Thank you.

[exAndrzej]

...straight to the source for the truth...

You are !

Trust me - I have quite a bit of resource on my side

When I discussed the native mode of the T550P with the top AIW guy for Europe - he said that it always works in MPEG2 and then goes to other formats from there

Having read your last post - I now suspect that I might have (a) asked the wrong question or (b) phrased it incorrectly

I am hoping for a definitive answer today - maybe tomorrow at the latest

[exAndrzej]

...AMCap... etc

I asked the questions you raised and got these back:-

1) If the card first encodes all analogue signals to MPEG-2, and then the stream has to be decoded, what happens when you use a program like AMCap, which only captures to WMV or to uncompressed AVI. i.e. What is the bitrate used by the card if the program has no options to tell the card what bitrate to use?
...in case you don’t use MCE or Cyberlink PowerCinema (both use hardware encoding and then decode to let the user see TV) the capture will be done directly using the chosen codec without going through the hardware encoding pattern…

2) What type of Dolby Digital Encoding do you get with the card?
Is it hardware or software?
...waiting on a definitive reply from the MM team (Multi Media)

3) If the MPEG-2 stream has to be decoded by the system then it must done by the installed DVD decoder (i.e. PowerDVD decoder which has options to deinterlace, producing a 60fps video), so could it be possible to have deinterlaced 60fps video capture?
...the video capture processor can only capture from standard format sources and create standard files: interlaced NTSC (60 Hz = 30 frames) or PAL (50 Hz = 25 frames/s) files. Power DVD produces a deinterlaced video at 60 Hz but this not a video stream

Hope this helps

[e.lectronick]

For checking on the specifics of my question. I appreciate it very much. I apologize if I ranted or stepped on any toes. I'm afraid that even having rewritten several drafts of my last message, I may have come off as antagonistic. That never benefits anyone.

"...in case you don’t use MCE or Cyberlink PowerCinema (both use hardware encoding and then decode to let the user see TV) the capture will be done directly using the chosen codec without going through the hardware encoding pattern…"

is exactly what I needed to know. *WHEW* I was hoping for that answer...

Now, I'm eagerly awaiting news of definite MMC support (9.0.xx).

-Erik.

[krose]

I have been following this thread and I finally registered. Two questions:

1. I am under the imperession that the card buffers to the memory chip to display TV instead of the hard drive like the Hauppauge cards. Correct?

2. What EPG can be used?

[SHSPVR]

This Sapphire Theatrix Theater 550 Pro
Here my take on this card
Few small problem I run it to rigth way
1: CTHELPER.exe crash on boot up I have Creative Lab Audigy 2 ZS, if I disable the Theater 550 Pro then reboot and wait everthing to load then re-enable Theater 550 Pro then CTHELPER dosen't crash.
2: PowerCinema dose not install on Windows2000 Pro even Cyberlink own web site is saying only for XP why did thoses guys chosse this if it can't install on Win2000 so how are Win2000 user going to use this card if there an't anything for the card after the back & side of box list Win2000 as being compatible.
3: Where ATI Multimedia Center 9.04 they have list in the User Manual but so far I haven't find anything on 9.04 only 9.03 is out and from what I under stand that dosen't work with this card.
ATI MMC software can be download but they are upgrade only let hope there come out full 9.04 for this card soon other then it nice paper wight for Win2000 user unless you use BeyondTV or Lean how use GraphEdit or get WinXP and put Phone Home carp and not so good CyberLink PowerCinema and MakeDVD stuff.
They did add very a nice Remote to package which is a CyberLink Remote.

Here are some screenshot take from Stargate SG-1 from WinTV-PVR 500MCE (Tuner input) an Theatrix Theater 550 Pro (S/Video Input) using SageTV (500MCE) and BeyondTV (550pro) recording using Womble MPEG-VCR to extract the raw image screenshot.
I like to hear your commant on what do see wrong.
S/video vs Tuner
Theatrix Theater 550 Pro 1

WinTV-PVR 500MCE 1

Theatrix Theater 550 Pro 2

WinTV-PVR 500MCE 2

Tuner vs Tuner
Theatrix Theater 550 Pro 1

WinTV-PVR 500MCE 1

Theatrix Theater 550 Pro 2

WinTV-PVR 500MCE 2

Composite vs Tuner
Theatrix Theater 550 Pro 1

WinTV-PVR 500MCE 1

[SHSPVR]

All screenshot are recording from Dishnetwork DP301 receiver Fast Action show seem to pass as far I can tell.
SageTV dosen't work with the Theater 550 Pro so only BeyondTV work some what as far I can tell you but have put up with 720x480 only and no odd ball bitrate like 3.5, 5.5 things like that, but it dose seem support a lot more diff resolution and host of other thing when I check out everthing under GraphEdit.
Comb filter
Noise Reduction filter
Odd thing was Video Proc Amp it lacks Sharpness control
Oh this card seem to do only MPEG2 there no listing for MPEG1, VCD, SVCD
It also showing audio format MPEG1 Layer 2 and LPCM audio
It seem that the can do AVI becuases it was listing an PIN as YUV2 720x480 output.
Here a few screenshot from GraphEdit



The noise reduction, comb filter parameters applied in the graph don't seem be sticking nor dose it do any thing far I can tell you the only things that dose seem be working is some of Audio and Video properties setting.

The bad news that MPEG files generated by the Theater 550 Pro are not very compatible with some tools like let say Ulead DVD MovieFactory when I try set up auto 1 min chapters point it carp out after 6 min's in to it and using Womble MPEG-VCR MPEG "GOP fixer" I find out it show lot's of error in GOP time code which not good at all, But writing out a new files with Womble MPEG-VCR fix the problem.

Other bad news this card main chip run HOT much hotter then Conexant CX23416 dose when under MAX Recording setting, The tuner seem to run cool.