New ATI Tuner Card.

[jonaslasky]

Jonas,
Thanks for the suggestion. I checked it out and it does look like it's quite nice. I don't expect that it will allow you to use the T550P chip to it's best advantage (eg hardware MPEG2 encoding). Only MCE, and Cyberlink can do that apparently. (ATI's Multimedia Center too, hopefully).
Can you tell me what adjustments to bitrate/filters/resolutions/etc... Beyond TV allows when capturing avi? MMC used to do all of these things, just not for the 550 Pro based cards.

-Erik

Unfortunately there seems to be no easy way to access the hardware in-depth with Beyond TV. There is only one recording format available... which is of course MPEG-2. While in-depth tweaking options may not satisfy serious video nuts, on the other hand, picture quality looks pretty damn good at the TV out. One thing to keep in mind is that, you're never ever going to get any better picture quality than the picture coming in. Keep in mind that the video you're getting from your cable provider has been converted to and from MPEG-2 a couple of times before it got to you. The picture you're going to get will never actually exceed the direct analog feed to a good quality TV. Consider that when the signal comes into your PC it gets converted back to MPEG-2 then back to analog again. Also keep in mind that full screen view on your monitor is going to look bad because you're forcing your graphics card to fill in the blank pixels. In many cases the difference between the picture coming in from the tuner and your desktop resolution would be over 200 percent!!! all the missing pixels have to be APPROXIMATED and they will inevitable come out wrong. I have my monitor set to 1600X1200 myself. Compare that to 640X480 or 720 by 480.... BIG difference. The best way to view video from any tuner card is on your TV through a TV out from your video/graphics card.

Considering all that, PQ from the Theater 550 Pro is really quite remarkable. No jaggies from fast moving objects onscreen, Snow is less than from my high quality Sony TV even on the worst channels. in my neighborhood, channels 2, 4 and 6 have always been kind of bad. Even the cable guy warned me of it. With the Theater 550 tuner, channel 2 comes in completely free of snow and herringbone. It is quite amazing. Other tuner cards can't even pull a signal from channel 2. Channel 4 and 6 are so full of herringbone that they're unwatchable. So my advice for now is live with the lack of tweaking possibilities with BeyondTV until MMC 9.04 comes out (hopefully) chock-full of them (crossing fingers). In the meantime (unless you have some other serious problems with your system) picture quality and functionality from BeyondTV are prety damn good. You can pause and rewind NBA games to your heart's content without fear of the dreaded jaggies

My own pet peeve is the ugly jaggies from bad MPEG-2 decodes from inferior tuner cards and satellite boxes. Even the best satellite boxes have the ugly motion induced jaggies and I can't stand it. Theater 550 Pro's output is completely free of motion jaggies. To me that alone is worth the relatively small amount of money I paid. I still can't understand the fascination with satellite TV or LCD and plasma screens.

Jonas

[e.lectronick]

Hi, Jonas
Alas, for me the real criteria is not just recording broadcast programming. I'm particularly interested in archiving my laserdisc collection. Thus, I'll need to be certain of the configurability of my tuner card before I drop the cash on it. Indeed I believe the T550P to be the best chip available for the money, but it's going to have to behave the way all of ATI's other chips behave.

'Til then, I'll spend my money on a couple of faster drives for a raid configuration. When the card has matured, I'll consider it again.

-Erik.

[myth]

Has anyone noticed how many new forum members this thread has atracted? If you google for info on the 550 pro this is one of the first liks you shale see... This is quite remarkable! I started this thread simply for some casual info and discussion and it turned into the most indeapth thread related to the 550 pro on the Internet!

[islasian]

myth.. I couldn't agree more... I signed up on this forum just so I can post on this thread..lol..
Anyways.. I agree with most of you on the MMC support... I purchased the Theatrix on the sole purpose of it supporting MMC(according to ATI press release) cus I will be doing some video transfers to DVD, and I'm picky on what settings I want to capture..etc...
I just got my card this Monday and I still haven't used it yet. I got mine from zipzoomfly and mine didn't come with PowerEnema 3(as someone refered to... ).. I called zipzoomfly and informed them, they told me to call Sapphire and request the CD... I called Sapphire and got a hold of *Tony* from Tech support. I explained to him that I purchased the card from zipzoom.. and I didn't get the PowerCinema3 CD and the manual states that I could use MMC 9.04, but it's nowhere to be found. He stated that MMC 9.04 was supposed to be released with their card, but ATI pushed the released of MMC 9.04 to the end of Feb. or beginning of March, in the mean time he was sending me my copy of PwrCinema3, which I still haven't gotten yet

So, unless MMC supports this card(which it states on page 7 & 10 of the manual, and even has a picture of the ATI Launch pad), it's going into my kids system and I'll do more research for a better card..I was planning on holding out for the PCI-E version anyways ... so far, just reading the post on this thread, I'm getting a little disappointed with this card, and I haven't even used it yet...

[satnav4]

islasian

As a lawyer by trade, I believe there has been a breach of contract. You purchased a product advertised to work with MMC 9.04, and you were sold a Power Enema. I, too, purchased the 550 for better bitrate and quality control. I already have 2 150's which work great for everyday Tivo like recording pared with GBPVR. I also have a Fusion Mpeg2, which like the Hauppauge products, has a Conexant chip at its core. And let's not forget the AIW 9800Pro I originally bought because of its Theater 200 chip. But the 550 came with all that hype--that 5 line 2D comb filtering and that 3D hardware filtering and the 12 bits combined video/audio and the MMC 9.04 support and etc., etc., etc.

I am starting to think I may have been tricked into this product by false advertising. However, I have decided to be patient because I believe ATI is well intentioned and I believe it will carry through on its promises--particularly the promise of MMC 9.04 support.

S.

[e.lectronick]

Has anyone noticed how many new forum members this thread has atracted? If you google for info on the 550 pro this is one of the first liks you shale see... This is quite remarkable! I started this thread simply for some casual info and discussion and it turned into the most indeapth thread related to the 550 pro on the Internet!

Ha! I crack myself up...

But you're right, Myth. I originally googled the 550 Pro and found this thread when it was only one page long. I've been to a bunch of other sites, but this one has grown more and been more chock full of info than all the rest. I think we have Andrzej to thank for that. He's been our go to guy for information throughout the discussion.

Here's hoping it'll get even better as time and new information comes out.

-Erik.

P.S. Satnav, let's hope ATI is feeling the heat to get the job done

[islasian]

islasian

You purchased a product advertised to work with MMC 9.04, and you were sold a Power Enema.

I totally agree, why print it in your manual, if it's not going to support it.

However, I have decided to be patient because I believe ATI is well intentioned and I believe it will carry through on its promises--particularly the promise of MMC 9.04 support.

S.

I also agree on this point as well. I'll give it a wait, I still have my current AIW working on my other system for now... plus, I have 30 days to return the product, according to zipzoomfly, if I'm not happy with it

[jonaslasky]

So, unless MMC supports this card(which it states on page 7 & 10 of the manual, and even has a picture of the ATI Launch pad), it's going into my kids system and I'll do more research for a better card..I was planning on holding out for the PCI-E version anyways ... so far, just reading the post on this thread, I'm getting a little disappointed with this card, and I haven't even used it yet...

As long as you don't use that "horrendous" PowerEnema, you won't be disappointed. If you use BeyondTV and you don't have any other issues, you'll be happily using the Theatrix until MMC 9.04 comes out. As I type this I'm watching last night's episode of CSI and i must say... it looks damn good. The colors are beautiful , white level is well under control, no motion induced jaggies (fulfilling one of ATI major promises), I mean you can tell even without knowing anything about 12 bit ADCs that the conversion is first rate. I know some of you guys are looking to convert Laser disk and VHS content to AVI, so I guess that would be a big question mark for now. But I doubt you can get any better picture quality from VHS no matter what format you use.

BTW I also got my Theatrix from zipzoomfly and I didn't get the PowerEnema with it either. I had to download it from Cybelink's web site.

Of course this is not to say that ATI is off the hook.

COME ON ATI !! .... RELEASE MMC 9.04 ALREADY!!!
STOP GIVING US THE USUAL CRAPPY SOFTWARE.

Jonas

[islasian]

If you use BeyondTV and you don't have any other issues, you'll be happily using the Theatrix until MMC 9.04 comes out.

I will try BeyondTV when I get a chance to.... I was also looking to do the Winamp TV deal since I read it on other people post that it works okay..thanks for the info. I will have to do that after I get home from work today.....

[bluefish266]

jonaslasky,

What dvd decoder you are using?

[jonaslasky]

jonaslasky,

What dvd decoder you are using?

I'm using the Snapstream Video/SP Decoder, but I've also tried Nero's decoder and I noticed Nero suffers from more jaggies when rendering a moving object. I've heard that Nvidia's decoder is better than SnapStream's so I'm going to install that and see what it does. I hope it's really better.

Again I don't think you can expect miracles from the 550 Pro. I think ATI oversold it when they promised being able to scale images to larger windows without losing quality. I just don't think it can be done by any company's hardware or software. Have any of you seen those line doubler boxes that they sell for a whole lot of moolah? .... pure garbage! They just double every pixel with comical results. Edges look extra thick and artificial... and damn annoying. Very sophisticated image enhancement hardware and software have been developed over the years by people bankrolled by the intelligence industry (read limitless budgets) and what do they have to show for all the money they've spent?... that's right..... nothing. They still rely on human interpretation in the end. Hardware or software that can magically sharpen hopelessly blurry images still only exists in movies. I just don't think it will ever be possible to make something out of nothing. In other words, how can anyone (man or machine) draw something he's never seen.

Jonas

[jonaslasky]

Ok I've tried the Nvidia DVD/MPEG-2 decoder and it's slightly better than the SnapStream Video/SP Decoder. It's slightly sharper and better at dealing with moving obects.

http://nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder_sysreqs.html

[jonaslasky]

Ok for you crazy purists out there. I've just tried the Theatrix with VirtualVCR and it works! It lets you save your files in many formats including DivX, XviD and even H.263. It also lets you tweak the bitrate to your heart's content. It even gives you acccess to the filters and noise reduction system. It has similar flexibility with audio as well, including AV sync It's worth a try for tweakers. It's a freeware of course.

I almost forgot... it also changes channels instantaneously.. unlike the other programs I've tried. Slow channel change was one of the complaints I've read, so some of you will be happy about this

My processor was noticeably working harder encoding XviD and DivX. You can hear the fan switching to a higher speed to keep up with the heat. The diehard video heads would really like Huffyuv compression which is supposed to be lossless.


Jonas

[satnav4]

Jonas

Thanks for the news on VirtualVCR. My concern is that Virtual is not taking advantage of the 550's hardware capabilities. What processor and ram do you have and what resources does mpeg2 recording use? I have plenty of cpu gobbling TV cards--I bought this one to hardware encode.

Thanks

S.

[jonaslasky]

Jonas

Thanks for the news on VirtualVCR. My concern is that Virtual is not taking advantage of the 550's hardware capabilities. What processor and ram do you have and what resources does mpeg2 recording use? I have plenty of cpu gobbling TV cards--I bought this one to hardware encode.

Thanks

S.

Maybe you're right... that it doesn't take advantage of hardware encoding, in fact I'm sure you're right. But aren't we going in circles here? I mean you either want AVI or MPEG-2. The choice is very clear. I think most people here already understand that if you're going to encode in any format other than MPEG-2, you're going to be doing it in software. Let's not waste our time discussing that, that's a given. Some people will choose AVI or MPEG-4 to save disk space, and they know what they're getting into. They'll appreciate that they can set the bit rate with VirtualVCR. Huffyuv compression is supposed to be LOSSLESS, so a lot of people will appreciate that too.

Now regarding MPEG-2... I think most consumer software take advantage of 550 Pro's hardware encoding. The problem is that most of them also operate in "time-shifting" mode all the time. This means that you're going to see a little higher CPU usage from the recording operation (on the hard disk) and the simultaneous DECODING operation. So you see, most people will never see the 5% CPU utilization that they're dreaming of. If you want to see how much CPU is being used encoding MPEG-2, set BeyondTV to record a program then watch how much CPU is being used while this is going on. The good thing about BeyondTV is that it doesn't display anything when it's just doing a SCHEDULED recording. I think that's the closest your going to get to seeing how much CPU power is spent on MPEG-2 ENCODING. If you want to see how much CPU power it takes to simultaneously encode and decode without a hardware encoder, try a software tuner card... it's almost impossible to use your computer while in time shifting mode. With the Theater 550 Pro I'm trying all sorts of encoding options WHILE I'm typing some of these messages, and my CPU still has power to spare. Oh and I'm not using the latest and greatest either. AthlonXP 2400+, 512 MB RAM, Nvidia 5200. I'm sure some people here will laugh at my equipment

Like many of you I was salivating at the thought of 100% hardware encoding, but I realized that that's just in the encoding side of things. Remember that when analog video comes into your computer, it gets sorted out, then encoded to MPEG-2, but you can't watch it as an MPEG-2, it has to be decoded and displayed on your screen or fed to your TV as analog video.
In other words it may not take any CPU power at all to ENCODE to MPEG-2 with Theater 550 Pro, but unless you have a built-in MPEG-2 decoder in your brain and an ultra-wideband wireless link to your hard drive. It's still going to take some CPU power to view the video. Having hardware decoding on your graphics card helps, but strangely, manufacturers require us to buy a separate piece of software to activate hardware decoding on the hardware we already bought. I did notice that when I got the Nvidia DVD/MPEG-2 decoder there was some improvement in picture quality. It's important to note that ATI never promised harware DECODING.

http://www.ati.com/products/theater550/index.html

Jonas

[exAndrzej]

As the list of questions grows - HEXUS Hierarchy finalise preparations for the multimedia showdown...