New ATI Tuner Card.

[backlund]

Ok,
So, I updated my drivers and tested the svideo in from the cable box. The picture was fantastic. MUCH better than I had seen before. There is still just a tad of sharpness issue, but it is definitely better. To test, I plugged my DVD player into the svideo on the card as well, and it looked about 95% as good as the DVD, which SHOULD be good enough for live tv to look perfect, since the resolution is lower on live tv. The Svideo from the cable box (when watching TV) more or less looked perfect, minus the slight sharpness issue (which was the issue when viewing the DVD as well).

Now, when I switch back to the coax going into the card, there is a bit more grain and digital noise. The picture coming from the cable box, or going directly into the card should be identical, since they are both analog channels (the channels I tested with weren't digital). they look identical when I plug the coax into the tv directly, or the cable box into the tv directly. The only time this grain shows up is when the coax goes directly to the card, which leads me to believe....

The tuner on this card sucks. Any picture quality issues are most likely not related to the mpeg2 encoder.

When I go into the card with svideo, I get great picture (minus a bit of sharpness). When I go into the card with coax I get a bit of grain/digital noise in the picture.
(going into the tv directly both ways gets the same picture).

Thoughts....?

[e.lectronick]

Backlund,
I'm not surprised that the S-Video input is better. You're bypassing some of the filters before the encoder stage. Maybe the driver issues are partly to do with the 2d and 3d comb filter stages. I'm hoping to use the S-Video inputs anyway, so that might be good news on that front.

-Erik.

[jonaslasky]

Now, when I switch back to the coax going into the card, there is a bit more grain and digital noise. The picture coming from the cable box, or going directly into the card should be identical, since they are both analog channels (the channels I tested with weren't digital). they look identical when I plug the coax into the tv directly, or the cable box into the tv directly. The only time this grain shows up is when the coax goes directly to the card, which leads me to believe....

The tuner on this card sucks. Any picture quality issues are most likely not related to the mpeg2 encoder.

When I go into the card with svideo, I get great picture (minus a bit of sharpness). When I go into the card with coax I get a bit of grain/digital noise in the picture.
(going into the tv directly both ways gets the same picture).

Thoughts....?

Before you get too excited.... my results are just the opposite. Tuning through the Theater 550 is absolutely clean (if a little soft). I can't see any moiré, herringbone pattern, or snow at all.... no matter what channel I tune to. In contrast my TV has trouble with channels 2,4 and 6.

Jonas

[dutchfudge]

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.

Take a look at this thread here:Doom9

Also, look at the Analog video capture guide, very informative. They have a test dvd files you can download as well. (Use IfoEdit to create .img, burn with DVD Decryptor).

[hrlslcbr]

The tuner on this card sucks. Any picture quality issues are most likely not related to the mpeg2 encoder.

The problem is that I captured via S-Video, and all the I frames looked bad.

Erik; the active capture area of the 550 is 720, and of the 200 is 705 (according to Doom9)

[backlund]

Maybe I have a low power signal coming from my coax input that the card doesn't like. Hence, the somewhat grainy picture. I know the coax cable is about 25' long from the wall (****ty apartment). Perhaps it gets boosted through the cable box. All I know is that the picture is quite a bit cleaner from the svideo. I'm moving to a house in a month, so perhaps that will fix any signal issues (assuming there are any).

[MBush]

I downloaded the new driver and I have the problem of the video being sluggish and not in sync with the audio. I running XP Pro SP2. Anyone have this problem also or anyone have a fix.
Thanks

[hrlslcbr]

What program are you using?
If you are capturing to avi, the audio will NOT be in synch.

[jonaslasky]

What program are you using?
If you are capturing to avi, the audio will NOT be in synch.

With iuVCR audio and video are in synch while recording on my system... and the picture is beautiful (with the latest driver). However, preview doesn't have audio.

Jonas

[Myrdhinn]

As much as I hate what ATi is doing with this card, I have to disagree about the tuner. Outside of it being a bit slow changing channels, soft picture (but so were the other cards), compared to my Leadtek winfast and the much vaunted hauppage 150 that every brags is so much better which lasted 3 days in my system, neither the leadtek or the hauppage could pull in all the channels without noise/snow/herringbone patterns. The 550 has no problems in that respect for me. I run through about 30' coax which is off a splitter to a tv and then off another splitter to share with my cable modem. In my case I suspect the noise filter or something that is preset and working is to aggressive for my signal and making the picture to soft. At least I've had no synch issues or recording though I had to install my msdn mce ver to get it so.

[dutchfudge]

... Outside of it being a bit slow changing channels...

Other programs beside power enema have faster/instant channel changing, or similar:YMMV

[Mace]

Yeah. For some reason power cinema is super super slow at changing channels.

[hrlslcbr]

I use GraphEdit to capture and I do get audio while previewing, but haven't tried to capture with audio with the last driver...

[Smahatma]

Lurker through this whole deal, finally got my card and decided to register and leave my comments:

Finally got my sapphire card -> using the latest ATi drivers on windows 2003 (used appcompat on setup.exe). Its working really really well with Beyond TV (which I just purchased) -- image quality is much much better than my previous POS hauppauge wintv-d (what the hell was I thinking when I bought that card?). Recording with BeyondTV is also working as it should.

I also tried iuVCR, but it seems to be slightly buggy because when I create a scheduled recording, it stops and restarts the recording every 3 or so seconds, creating lots of files if you let it record for a while.

The only thing that I wish to have is Dscaler support because I'd like to play PS2 through the composite inputs. The reason I like Dscaler in particular is because all the other PVR software i've tried has a really big lag which renders the games unplayable (i.e. not realtime), and while I can use MPC for this which has very little delay, it does not have deinterlacing. I could, however, use my hauppauge svideo->composite inputs with seemingly no delay with dscaler for scaled+deinterlaced picture.

All in all, I am more than satisfied because the picture and audio are fantastic compared to my last card, and the PVR of beyondTV works well, though it kind of sucks that I had to shell out an additional 50$ to purchase BTV in order to use the potential of the card.

[jonaslasky]

Lurker through this whole deal, finally got my card and decided to register and leave my comments:

Finally got my sapphire card -> using the latest ATi drivers on windows 2003 (used appcompat on setup.exe). Its working really really well with Beyond TV (which I just purchased) -- image quality is much much better than my previous POS hauppauge wintv-d (what the hell was I thinking when I bought that card?). Recording with BeyondTV is also working as it should.

I also tried iuVCR, but it seems to be slightly buggy because when I create a scheduled recording, it stops and restarts the recording every 3 or so seconds, creating lots of files if you let it record for a while.

SNIPPED

All in all, I am more than satisfied because the picture and audio are fantastic compared to my last card, and the PVR of beyondTV works well, though it kind of sucks that I had to shell out an additional 50$ to purchase BTV in order to use the potential of the card.

I posted my favorable review of BeyondTV about halfway through this thread or maybe earlier... but some people here didn't like it that I was saying the card works well. I guess I can understand they wish to put as much pressure on ATi as possible.... and that's fine. ATi should be pressured... they really need their butts kicked a bit. I can't believe that SnapStream (BeyondTV) wrote a program that works fabulously with Theater 550 sight unseen yet the manufaturer (ATI) can't get their act straight after months of fumbling around. They seem to have lost their sense of shame. Just think of what BeyondTV can do if they actually optimized their program for Theater 550!!

Jonas

[hrlslcbr]

Smahatma: The newest MPC does have a deinterlacing shader (yes, a shader; it uses pixel shaders 2.0), but not as good as what you might find in DScaler, and I get absolutely no delay (audio does have delay, though).
But I use my homemade RCA to 3.5mm connector directly to my soundcard (or speakers) and get audio and video with no delay.