New ATI Tuner Card.

[satnav4]

You know, they might have been thinking about dual layer DVD media becoming the de facto DVD media standard: once the price per disk comes down of course.

Perhaps, but if you are saving only to watch on TV, you will run out of hard drive space in a hurry. I record, on average, about 12-14 TV shows a week for the family. That's 50% of my slave drive at "Best". Of course, I get behind watching all that stuff and have other programs there from previous weeks. Not everyone has a spare 200 gigs laying around--especially the mom and pop crowd who is now the alleged target of this device. Perhaps it should contain a warning to use the "Good" setting given the audience. My main point was that I was treating the 150 unfairly by comparing it to a 550 capturing at about twice the rate. Regardless, the 150 still did very well.

S.

[e.lectronick]

You know, they might have been thinking about dual layer DVD media becoming the de facto DVD media standard: once the price per disk comes down of course.

From what I've read on ATI's website, their MPEG2 codec is supposed to compress more efficiently (eg smaller final file size) thanks to all the filters working on the signal.

-Erik.

[satnav4]

From what I've read on ATI's website, their MPEG2 codec is supposed to compress more efficiently (eg smaller final file size) thanks to all the filters working on the signal.

-Erik.

At 8 gigs for a 2 hour movie, they might want to spruce up that codec a bit more.

S.

[blakev]

At 8 gigs for a 2 hour movie, they might want to spruce up that codec a bit more.

S.

From what Question's test showed us, they haven't optimized much of anything yet! They've just cobbled it together with some bailing wire and thrust it out on an unsuspecting public.

Which reminds me: bubbaganoush posted the cyberlink recording profile file, with all the nuts and bolts revealed.

Has anyone tried to set different, even oddball, bitrates in the profile file and been able to encode with any luck?

Frankly, if the settings can be made directly in the recording profile file, and it works, I'll take it all back regarding Power Cinema. Well, maybe not all of it.

[farmkid]

Not to get the thread off on a tangent or anything, but has anyone tried adding a heat spreader or anything to the chip to help keep temperatures down? I know a few have suggested it, but I have yet to see anyone report on it.

[ciregnol]

Not to get the thread off on a tangent or anything, but has anyone tried adding a heat spreader or anything to the chip to help keep temperatures down? I know a few have suggested it, but I have yet to see anyone report on it.

I have. I put 2 on--one on the Theater 550 chip, and one on the TV tuner near the back of the card. I did not have any thermal ADHESIVE, so I used my Artic Alumina thermal PASTE. I also placed an 80 mm NMB fan literally inches away to blow right at it. I will check it tonight to make sure that the spreaders haven't fallen off or anything, but man, I've tried pulling off spreaders from CPUs stuck with that stuff and it's a non-trivial task. It should hold. Especially since the chips are parallel to the ground, not vertical. Anyway...I think my issue of mosiac/pixellated sections of live and recorded images has gone away. I don't watch TV much myself (which is ironic considering my passion to get my MCE machine up and working), but have asked my wife to tell me if she still sees the artifacts.

I will continue to pay attention, as this was the #1 beef I had against the card. I will post again if I still am noticing these artifacts.

[satnav4]

Videohelp.com now has all 3 550 cards included in its capture card list: http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards I encourage anyone with these cards to post their experiences there. I will do so when I get some free time. I post as LRD there, and have contributed comments in the past.

S.

[e.lectronick]

Does anybody know when Michael is supposed to be back with some more answers to our questions? I'd still like to know whether capturing to avi will allow us to take advantage of all the advanced processing and filtering capabilities of the 550 Pro.

-Erik.

[exAndrzej]

...Where's Michael ?...

There is a tiny little show starting in Hanover this week called CeBIT

Michael is busy with the set up for this right now - but I am sure that he will come back to you as soon as possible

[Question]

e.lectronick

I've concluded that the 3D comb filter doesn’t work if you capture using the composite input.

Read my earlier post for my test.

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...802#post411802

[jonaslasky]

Forget the Theater 550 Pro chip, we've been through enough grief already with that pile of crap.

Philips just came out with a chip that integrates simultaneous hardware encode and decode of HDTV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMA, H.264.

http://www.semiconductors.philips.co...file_1144.html

I spit on Theater 550 Pro.

Jonas

[SHSPVR]

Well jonaslasky I hate tell you but chip like thoses never make it in to PC add-on device they only end up in set-top boxes.

[jonaslasky]

Well jonaslasky I hate tell you but chip like thoses never make it in to PC add-on device they only end up in set-top boxes.

Fine... I'll make the card myself. It's not that hard. I can whip one up in a week or two. I'll check it out as soon as the datasheets are out. Now I need a software guy to volunteer their services.

Very funny Satnav.... (the MMC reference) , but no... I think third party software solutions would serve our customers best NOT!!

No ... maybe MMC 9.06


Jonas

[satnav4]

Fine... I'll make the card myself. It's not that hard. I can whip one up in a week or two.


Jonas

I would like to be the first customer of "JonasTech". Will your card be compatible with MMC 9.04?

S.

[thatdude90210]

I wonder how many more of these user review ATI has to see before they realized something, that the Powercinama crap is costing them sales and reputation.

[hrlslcbr]

Andrzej:
Can you give us a small explanation on what the options of the 'ATI AVStream analogue capture filter' do (we have to select either the 2D or 3D comb filters, or they are used together...)?
Cheers.

EDIT: I'm using GraphEdit