New ATI Tuner Card.

[SHSPVR]

Mike just becuases it pass MS certification that dosen't make it rigth and MS certification is one biggest joke there is I saw bug get pass them when there so call testing TV card certification is done unlike other device.

[jonaslasky]

Mike just becuases it pass MS certification that dosen't make it rigth and MS certification is one biggest joke there is I saw bug get pass them when there so call testing TV card certification is done unlike other device.

How about ISF Certification? it seems to me it's just as worthless.

Jonas

[SHSPVR]

that to jonaslasky.

[theatrix]

Hi,
Now, I'd like to get back to our discussion of filters being disabled for capture. Now I'm not sure what you guys meant by capture, but I tried to feed in a DVD player Composite Video out into a Theater 550 Pro card and played with some settings in GraphEdit (looking at the Video from MCE). The DVD had some clips meant to test comb filters and right in the first minute when I switched the comb filter from 3d to 2d I saw a huge difference (need to stop playing while switching settings). So it is obvious that 3d comb filter is up and running for Composite input (if you have it turned on). What were you guys doing that made you think it was disabled?

Mike,

Capture = recording / dumping / saving video stream to file for editing, authoring and burning.

The card has 2 modes "preview and capture" and they clearly access the cards features differently because the preview is of much higher quality than capture. I will openly admit that this card gave me a very good tv preview on my pc screen but at the risk of repeating myself - the filters are disabled during capture. The easiset way for me to test this was to have a preview window and capture window side by side on my pc screen whilst using graphedit and the differences were drastic.

What im looking for is for someone from ATI to say "sorry, we mislead you about the filters and the truth is they are only good for the 'auto-filtering' performed in preview mode and are not suitable for capturing video because they do not work in capture mode"

I believe you when you say that you have done a test on a comb filter testing signal but have you tried hooking up to a vcr via composite and then setting up a cpature screen and then trying to improve the signal with the cards filters, in the way that 99% of the worlds video editing enthusiasts would do ?

Thanks

[swiego]

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.

Wow, I wish ATI had spent as much effort on the 550 Pro as they do on nVidia bashing!

I'd still like to know when the sharpness, AGC and other "adjustable" features advertised on the side panel of the box will be functional. I won't even call myself an advanced user, just someone who bought something off the shelf based on the things written on the box. Granted that's probably my fault, but at the time I was holding ATI products to a higher standard than Monster Cable and Bose.

I'm sure these features are in there somewhere... preview window has always looked phenomenal to me. Too bad they'd never make it to capture...

[swiego]

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.

Sure, here's one: AGC. The 550 Pro (that I bought) advertises automatic gain control for video. It seems to work in the preview window but not the capture window. So where is this AGC, how do I know that it's turned on or off, was it ever even implemented?

It's on the side panel of my ATI box with marketing screenshots and all.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi swiego,
I'll get to your issue shortly, but first I'd like to clarify something. If you've read my previous posts you'd have known that of the 70+ posts I've made in the last couple of months only one even mentions Nvidia (the one you quoted). The reason I posted that was because there was a lenghty discussion going on about the Nvidia card and since I was probably the only one of you guys who actually had and tested one, I'd share some truths and experiences that I've had with it. ALL my other posts are about ATI related products/issues and me trying to help people resolve them. So I'd appreciate not being labelled as something I'm not. Now back to the issues.

Regarding the AGC, it's definitely advertised and it's definitely implemented. You can't really turn it off or on, it's there as part of the R/F tuning capabilities. What were you doing/watching to make you think that it's not there?

Regarding Preview vs. Capture pin, those outputs are exactly the same. I hooked up a Theater 550 and tried it out on both Composite input from a DVD player and coax input with analog TV and both windows from GraphEdit look the same so I'm not sure why you guys are seeing differences. I even spoke to a senior driver guy and he said both of those are actually the same, the difference is some stuff not related to the actual video quality.

[hrlslcbr]

Regarding Preview vs. Capture pin, those outputs are exactly the same. I hooked up a Theater 550 and tried it out on both Composite input from a DVD player and coax input with analog TV and both windows from GraphEdit look the same so I'm not sure why you guys are seeing differences. I even spoke to a senior driver guy and he said both of those are actually the same, the difference is some stuff not related to the actual video quality.

Mike... Are you sure you have a 550 pro card and not a 650 pro? This problem has been confirmed by... well, everyone; but you say the 2 pins output exactly the same thing... .
Regarding the nVidia 'issue', I see your post just as an opinion from a user who had both cards, not as 'nVidia bashing'..

[AssafR]

This is regarding ATI Theater 550 (PAL version)
The most disturbing thing for me - I cannot record at 1/2D1 resolution using GBPVR.

A few months ago tried it with ChrisTV and it wouldn't switch from full D1 either.
Last time I tried to manually set resolution using ChristTweak and then start, GBPVR, it crashed the computer...

Is there a bug in the driver? Any chance of it being fixed?

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
First I'd like to confirm that my post regarding the Nvidia card was meant to be a user's opinion based on facts (correctly understood by hrlslcbr). I don't just say so and so is bad, end of story. I tried to be as clear and accurate as possible. Anyways I think we should forget that whole thing and focus back on issues at hand. First, I'd like to share with you all that we now have articles in the ATI support KB regarding the sharpness issue and the volume issue. You can find them at these links respectively:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=22479

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=22478

Right now both articles just mention TV Wonder Elite, but we are in the process of updating it with a list of partner boards, so that will be up there shortly.

Regarding this pins thing, I'm using a retail TV Wonder Elite so I'm not sure where you guys are seeing differences. What kinds of inputs are you looking at? I tried analog TV (NTSC) and Composite in from a DVD player. I even turned the 3d filter to 2d (all in GraphEdit) and saw the same decrease in quality on both of them (very easy to see on DVD Composite in using some special clips I have). Like I said they're actually meant to be showing the same thing. So honestly, I'm not seeing an issue with this can anyone describe in more detail what they're watching and what they're seeing as the difference.

SHSPVR, regarding that Ulead chapters issue you brought up, what application are you using to record the MPEG files?

[SHSPVR]

1/2 D1 resolution works fine for me in SaegTV and GraphEdit AssafR

[SHSPVR]

Mike it really shouldn't make any diff what application I use after all the application only tell it when to start with what ever profile setting parameters (videobitrate, peakvideobitrate, audiobitrate, audiosampling) and when to stop the capture
Forgot to add that was with Ulead DVD MovieFactory ver 2 which I perf and think ver 3 did the same thing to but I recall of hand.
Testing ver 4 rigth now.

[SHSPVR]

Ok ver 4 pass but why in world dose Womble MPEG-VCR MPEG "GOP fixer" still show lot's of error in GOP time code which not good at all.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi everyone,
If any of you checked out www.ati.com today, you'd see that Theater 650 Pro was unveiled at Computex. It's our new generation chip and has some interesting features, which you can check out at:

http://www.ati.com/products/theater650pro/index.html

Theater 650 Pro products will ship with our brand new TV tuning application Catalyst Media Center (CMC). You can read up on that at:

http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst...ter/index.html

I'm now at liberty to discuss this product, but I'd like to still focus on existing issues customers are having with their products. Stay tuned!

[jonaslasky]

Hi everyone,
If any of you checked out www.ati.com today, you'd see that Theater 650 Pro was unveiled at Computex. It's our new generation chip and has some interesting features, which you can check out at:

http://www.ati.com/products/theater650pro/index.html

Theater 650 Pro products will ship with our brand new TV tuning application Catalyst Media Center (CMC). You can read up on that at:

http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst...ter/index.html

I'm now at liberty to discuss this product, but I'd like to still focus on existing issues customers are having with their products. Stay tuned!

So I guess ATI finally admits that their motion compensation on the T 550 is not quite up to par. Now they have a better one with the 650.

>Unrivaled TV clarity worldwide thanks to a new motion adaptive 3D comb filter
> supporting NTSC, PAL and SECAM standards

What's optional about ATSC and DVB-T? Does that mean some cards will use the ATSC/DVB-T tuner and some wont?

Jonas

[BFever]

Hi everyone,
If any of you checked out www.ati.com today, you'd see that Theater 650 Pro was unveiled at Computex. It's our new generation chip and has some interesting features, which you can check out at:

http://www.ati.com/products/theater650pro/index.html

Theater 650 Pro products will ship with our brand new TV tuning application Catalyst Media Center (CMC). You can read up on that at:

http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst...ter/index.html

I'm now at liberty to discuss this product, but I'd like to still focus on existing issues customers are having with their products. Stay tuned!

Ok MMike...

1) Can you give us some real differences between the 650 vs the 550?

2) Is the volume an issue on the 650? The sharpness?

3) Does the Catalyst Media Center work with the 550?

Thanks,
BFever