New ATI Tuner Card.

[e.lectronick]

Frankly, I'm sure we'll get someone from ATI brass to reconfirm, and likely contradict, the ATI cus support guy. It's clear as a bell to us fence-sitters that if this card doesn't play with decent software, we're not buying it.

I don't get it...

It seems like there's been a major breakdown in interdepartmental communication over at ATI. One hand doesn't seem to know what the other hand is doing. That's not so good. I sure hope they can get their act together and begin to present a unified image to their customers and partners. While I'll admit to having gleaned some morbid satisfaction from this whole ordeal, I don't think it ought to have been necessary for us to wrestle with the company just to get reliable information.

-Erik.

[ciregnol]

spacded,

I find the picture quality is indistiguishable going through the Theater 550 Pro or directly to my TV.

I only have a 25" Sharp TV, so perhaps a better TV would be more noticable, but I find it 100% like watching live TV.

[ciregnol]

spacded,

I find the picture quality is indistiguishable going through the Theater 550 Pro or directly to my TV.

I only have a 25" Sharp TV, so perhaps a better TV would be more noticable, but I find it 100% like watching live TV.

[jonaslasky]

spacded,

I find the picture quality is indistiguishable going through the Theater 550 Pro or directly to my TV.

I only have a 25" Sharp TV, so perhaps a better TV would be more noticable, but I find it 100% like watching live TV.

While I'm inclined to agree with Ciregnol, I have to caution you that your actual picture will depend on other things... like your graphics card and you MPEG-2 decoder. For instance jaggies on objects in motion is highly dependent on how fast your system can DECODE the MPEG-2 stream that's being produced by the 550 Pro (in hardware). Again ATI never promised hardware DECODING.

In my own experience, picture quality from the 550 Pro is very good. I'm tempted to say just as good as direct to TV, but I know that can't possibly be true. The conversion to MPEG-2 and back to analog has got to have SOME penalties... but it's a very small one.

The thing that really impresses me is the hardware noise reduction. The picture from the 550 is amazingly clean and rich looking. Very nice, saturated colors for a standard definition TV.

Jonas

[spacded]

Thanks for your feedback guys, NOW IM EVEN MORE IMPATIENT!!!!

I wish they would release the Pal version soon!!

[jonaslasky]

Another word of caution....
don't expect the picture to scale to your 1600 by 1200 pixel computer monitor without looking washed out... that's just not going to happen. As I said a few posts back, no one... man or machine can draw a picture of something it's never seen before. Displaying TV full screen on your computer monitor is not the best way to view TV pictures.

Jonas

[neutron]

Review Powercolor 550 Pro

Powercolor will sure list this review.........................

[spacded]

read the review and even more excited!!

my Tv has VGA input 600x480 so hopefully it should be fine

[satnav4]

Review Powercolor 550 Pro

Powercolor will sure list this review.........................

Who wrote this review - Cyberlink or ATI?

[satnav4]

The PowerColor comes with Cyberlink Power Cinema TV Plus with an EPG. Sapphire supposedly comes with the non-plus, non-EPG version. (I still don't have my software). If you are content with crappy software, I guess the less crappy would be better.

S

[jonaslasky]

It could be the www.zipzoomfly.com is selling the crappy version for the cheapest price... I got mine from them.

Jonas

[thatdude90210]

So, powercinema plus with EPG. Behold... the polished turd.

[satnav4]

So, powercinema plus with EPG. Behold... the polished turd.

I really did laugh out loud at this one. Sapphire probably realized that no one would be satisfied with any software from Cyberlink (except that idiot who did the review mentioned a few posts above), so why spring for the "polished turd"?

In other matters, I don't see any difference it the tuner picture quality between the 550 card and my AIW 9800 Pro. I can't fairly compare the encodes, because I have no idea what bitrate the "unpolished turd" used at the best setting. Hell, I can't even find where the software hides the recordings. The 550 did consume 8-12% CPU resourses while recording at the best setting, while the AIW uses about 18% at 4800/6200. I suspect Jonas is right that timehifting may explain the 550's CPU number.

S.

[satnav4]

Deleted.

[jonaslasky]

I really did laugh out loud at this one. Sapphire probably realized that no one would be satisfied with any software from Cyberlink (except that idiot who did the review mentioned a few posts above), so why spring for the "polished turd"?

S.

I bet the reviewer never even installed the card or tried the software
Unfortunately there are a lot of dishonest reviewers.

Just to be clear (for new members) all my observations were made using Beyond TV (which Satnav detests ) Unlike PowerEnema it doesn't display video while recording. In other words it doesn't force simultaneous ENCODE and DECODE... which unnecessarily uses up CPU resources.

Jonas

[myth]

I put mine at the same place I set my old wave master at last year... (Trash can) I'm buying a NTV! Take that ATi! I had enough of this waiting around for empty promises!