New ATI Tuner Card.

[blakev]

blakev: I wasn't encoding anything; just playing GameCube and audio is always out of synch when not using the MPEG-2 encoder (with every program I've tried).

I know nothing about GameCube , but you're playing it on the PC via the 550, aren't you? (Forgive my ignorance)
If so I think the example still holds cos GameCube is processor intensive. Basically lots of stuff works on the engineers dedicated bench, but we home users want to multi-task.
I have an old conexant chip, so if I want the audio in sync on captures, it's ctrl-alt-delete and close all non-critical processes: then the audio stays with the image when I capture. Before starting to capture I close about 15 processes. I googled to figure out which ones.
Try this and if you still notice audio lag/desynch with GameCube, you've narrowed it down to ATi's non-optimized drivers. Unless your card's hardware is dodgy, but without better ATi drivers it's going to be impossible to tell.
Now you can see why on paper this card looked good to me cos when I capture, my machine is unavailable for anything else.
Too bad the 550 is only good on paper so far.

Satnav4, sorry, I wasn't clear:

If he can get his hands on a PAL B/G card, perhaps his software could be made to work.

What I meant was: the tuner does what it does, and for the 550, from what I've read, from a hardware point of view, the tuner can theoretically resolve all broadcast frequencies. But only if ATi drivers are up to it!

Therein lies the delay on ATi's part: to be nice to them, I would assume writing the drivers is not non-trivial. Maybe to get PAL all flavours to work causes NTSC conflicts. Maybe it's a lack of developer resources or some sort of technical impossibility that's come up by surprise. ATi isn't telling. We can only speculate in the dark.

What's for sure is this card should never have hit the market until the dev was off the critical path. Playing catch up when the card is released does nothing for a company's reputation. I've seen key developers crumble under such stress and just walk out.

[digitalravi]

What I meant was: the tuner does what it does, and for the 550, from what I've read, from a hardware point of view, the tuner can theoretically resolve all broadcast frequencies. But only if ATi drivers are up to it!

This makes a lot of sense to me. As I pointed out earlier in one of my posts, the
Microtune 2050 tuner which is used in the 550 card is itself compatible with NTSC,
PAL and SECAM standards. The 550 chip is claimed with work with both NTSC and PAL,
with digital IF demodulation and has world wide audio compatibility. So what
distinguishes different versions of the card for different broadcast standards,
should only be the drivers.

To substantiate further, the NTSC CATV channles start at 54 MHz and span
6 MHz a channel. But the PAL CATV frequencies start at 46 MHz and span 8 MHz
a channel. So may be the tuner has to made to tune to all frequencies by the
drivers themselves.

[hrlslcbr]

Now I have one more wishlist for the Theatre 550. From the beginning, ATI
has been shouting with big mouth that 550 has hardware MPEG capability
and that it never drops frames. Why cant the ATI supply a
software for using the 550 chip as a standalone MPEG encoder. I am not
talking of the MPEG encoding of the TV signals or the encoding of captured
video using S-video/composite video port. I want the 550 to share the task of
MPEG encoding the raw AVI file on my disk, along with my main CPU.

I don't thing that would be a good idea. The MPEG encoder of the card produces poor quality compared to some software encoders (there's a problem with all the 'I' frames of the encoded video).


blakev:
I was using a real GameCube (not an emulator), and connecting the video out (composite) to the purple box.
The audio will always be out of synch; just like when you watch TV, there's a 2 second delay.

[dutchfudge]

Everyone should contact their local news stations, and drum up some mainstream bad press. That will really put ATI under the gun to change their ways.

I'll probably be contacting abc 7 in the bay area, and try to get Michael Finney all up in ATI's face

[hrlslcbr]

I don't think that's the best way. I would wait until ATi says something about this issue.

[e.lectronick]

I don't thing that would be a good idea. The MPEG encoder of the card produces poor quality compared to some software encoders (there's a problem with all the 'I' frames of the encoded video).

So, if someone (like me) wants the highest possible quality, and that means capturing to uncompressed AVI (or using "lossless" Huffyuv/MJPEG), then software encoding to MPEG2, what is the attraction of the Theater 550 Pro chip?

If you're capturing via S-video input (which is a good idea if you want the highest quality) you're already automatically bypassing the comb filters because the luminance and chrominance are already seperated. What's left that the chip has to offer? Automatic Gain Control? The Theater 200 on my 9800 pro has that. What am I forgetting?

Seems to me, at this point, an AIW mounted Theater 200 has everything going for it, and more when you consider it works the way it's described to work, it implements ATI's MMC to the fullest extent, *and* it utilizes the AGP 4x/8x port to help avoid bottlenecks in the PCI bus. This would seem to be especially helpful if you're running a sound card and a RAID configuration (which usually seems to be implemented via the PCI bus too).

I'm starting to think the 550 Pro is just change and *not* progress. If the Theater 200 ain't broke...

-Erik.

[hrlslcbr]

Noise reduction filter, 720x480 active capture area, and...nothing else.
Good 'conclusion' mate.

[e.lectronick]

Noise reduction filter, 720x480 active capture area, and...nothing else.
Good 'conclusion' mate.

The Theater 200 captures 720x480 with ease. So that leaves the Noise Reduction filter.
Hmpf! Not much going for it. If it doesn't translate from specs on paper to actual functionality, then the 200 beats it by a mile

Here's the pdf spec sheet for the Theater 200 in case anyone is interested in taking a second look at an AIW card. Pound for pound it's A/D video converter is still 2 bits better than any 10 bit Conexant based board using the CX23880/1/2/3. That accounts for Hauppage, Leadtek, MSI, KWorld et al... They all utilize that chipset.

http://www.ati.com/products/theater200/theater200.pdf

and here's the ATI page:

http://www.ati.com/products/theater200/index.html

-Erik.

[hrlslcbr]

Erik: Many capture cards capture at that resolution, but the actual captured information is not 720 pixels; they capture at a lower resolution and then stretch it to 720 pixels wide, so the aspect ratio is changed. The theatre 200 does not capture all 720 pixels.

[Myrdhinn]

I'll give the 550 one thing.. coming from a leadtek winfast 2000 deluxe where if I surfed the net or anything (actually even doing nothing) would produce captures with stuttering sound/jerky video (tried a kworld with hardware mpeg and it wasnt much better) I can at least with this card surf the net, or hang on irc and no stutter or anything. OTOH my old 13inch nonflat tv in the spare room has a pciture that looks so much sharper and better. I can't take the card back so I'll just hope ATi gets it's act together about this card.

[satnav4]

I'll give the 550 one thing.. coming from a leadtek winfast 2000 deluxe where if I surfed the net or anything (actually even doing nothing) would produce captures with stuttering sound/jerky video (tried a kworld with hardware mpeg and it wasnt much better) I can at least with this card surf the net, or hang on irc and no stutter or anything. OTOH my old 13inch nonflat tv in the spare room has a pciture that looks so much sharper and better. I can't take the card back so I'll just hope ATi gets it's act together about this card.

A Hauppauge 150 would give you the same functionality, but it would work much better with many 3rd party applications.

S.

[e.lectronick]

Erik: Many capture cards capture at that resolution, but the actual captured information is not 720 pixels; they capture at a lower resolution and then stretch it to 720 pixels wide, so the aspect ratio is changed. The theatre 200 does not capture all 720 pixels.

Interesting... I did not know that. What then is the actual pixel count?
I'm particularly interested in capturing my letterboxed laserdisc collection in as high resolution as possible. Would anything be cut off from the sides? Or would it just be a few pixels less and not matter much?

-Erik.

P.S. I just looked over at www.digitalFAQ.com, Lord Smurf's site, and it says there that the Theater 200 is native to the 704x480 resolution, but I'm not sure if that just means it defaults to that or if that is it's max resolution before it needs to do the stretching you mentioned.

[e.lectronick]

Is the Hauppauge 150 considered to be their best offering? There are models with higher numbers and associated pricetags.

-Erik

[SpHeRe31459]

Is the Hauppauge 150 considered to be their best offering? There are models with higher numbers and associated pricetags.

-Erik

The PVR-150's lower model number is deceptive, it is however their newest tech. The 150 seems to refer to the simplified redesign and lower cost rather then reduced functionality.
http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1931
http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=pvr_150_1

[SpHeRe31459]

Hey guys I also wanted to introduce myself if you ever get over to HTPCNews.com you probably already know me. I have been involved with various HTPC projects and websites for quite some time now. A few weeks back I obtained a review sample of the PowerColor Theater 550 Pro and set about trying test the advanced features ATI claimed. I knew from SHS's posts here and at our own 17 page Theater 550 Pro thread over at HTPCnews many were broken initally. I was hoping that the later drivers had changed. Of course we all know that sadly nothing had until the latest drivers when the comb filter was quietly enabled.

I want to let you know that I have tried to get ATI to respond to the core functionality issues we have all seen: total lack of a sharpness control, lack of comb filtering, and noise reduction that seems to do little to nothing. My queries have been met with rather terse e-mails that have a tone to them that seem to imply we are all morons that can't build a graph in Graphedit and that we can't understand the advanced capabilities of the filters. The last e-mail I received I was told to expect a reviewers guide to the Theater 550 Pro, and that it would be ready in ~2 weeks.

The ATI Multimedia group's philosphy seems to be "lack of information", this is in contrast to the ATI Graphics Processor division which publishes extensive documentation (including errata) with each driver release.

So keep up the push to the ATI representitives on your side of the pond. Maybe they will be more helpful when pressed for information.

[satnav4]

Is the Hauppauge 150 considered to be their best offering? There are models with higher numbers and associated pricetags.

-Erik

I think so. It is their newest. It costs less because it uses one Conexant chip to replace the separate video and audio chips in the 250 and 350. It also performs better chroma sampling than the 250 and 350.

S.