New ATI Tuner Card.

[jaboso]

Good point; that is why I proposed a 3 way splitter. I meant printed circuit board, and in my experience, not all splitters have them. It is better to split the signal internally, than through a series of external splitters and cables. I do not have the jumper settings, but I do know that the ones I am using are supposed to pass up to 1 ghz (versus 900mhz).

Finally, let's wait to see if his internet signal is compromised. If not, this is just an academic discussion.

S.

Looks you all need some education about splitters here is the link.

http://www.lotsaspotz.com/Info/TV_AMP_EDUCATION.htm

[satnav4]

Looks you all need some education about splitters here is the link.

http://www.lotsaspotz.com/Info/TV_AMP_EDUCATION.htm

Where was I wrong?

S.

[jaboso]

Where was I wrong?

S.

I didn't say you were wrong. I concluded from all these posts about splitters that you are all kind of in a dark.


jaboso

[satnav4]

I didn't say you were wrong. I concluded from all these posts about splitters that you are all kind of in a dark.

jaboso

It is a nice summary.

S.

[SHSPVR]

Nice page jaboso very useful info.

[satnav4]

Nice page jaboso very useful info.

SHSPVR

Thanks for checking in. Have you gotten the 550 to work yet with GBPVR?

S.

[blakev]

So why can't ATI print the specs and the Television standards of the card and the regions where it works on the card or at least on the box.
...
After much thought I decided to settle for a Hauppauge 250 or a Leadtek card. I will not wait any longer for buying a 550 card, which no body knows when it will be available in PAL version.
...
Here Hauppauge has included options to shop for either NTSC or PAL
cards, separately.
http://registration.hauppauge.com/webstore/hardware.asp

Hauppauge are normally pretty good, but I just got burned on the 150. I need SECAM/PAL/NTSC. The PVR-150 box says nothing about standards. I bought it anyway, frustrated and fed up at ATi on this 550 Pro fiasco. The documentation inside says PAL/SECAM. Ooops. The card doesn't handle NTSC, not even on composite. Vender took it back, issued a credit (no money back in Europe) and was compassionately surprised there was no NTSC support.
Plus I discovered the delightful MPEG hardware encoder does press your processor into action when encoding, despite claims to the contrary! When I plugged a composite signal in: I had processor use of 40 to 75%! Card only hardware encodes signal entering via the antenna. Hauppauge does not document this. I believe someone on this list mentioned the same thing with the 550 Pro and an xbox console. I should've known.
However, I have to agree with you about ATi.
But I'm sure Michael is still lurking here and will spill the beans on SECAM before 2006. Or 2007.
digitalravi, PAL cards are in Europe. There's overclockers.uk, as someone mentioned uplist, and there's komplett:
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.asp?sku=306371&s=sc
For komplett, you just have to have friends in Sweden, Norway, or Switzerland who can buy and ship you the card, as they refuse to ship outside their borders. Let's hope the more pragmatic komplett Germany will break down and order some. komplett UK and Ireland won't stock them: they've been reading this thread I bet.
I remain interested because the tuner spec supports multi-frequency, so in an ideal world driver support should follow. One day. 2008?
Seems there is STILL no multi-format TV card with hardware MPEG encoding, working on ALL inputs (antenna, composite, s-video) out there. There's just pro units like Canopus, running at 3 times the price, and of course tuner-less.

digitalravi, the leadtek is a "normal" conexant card, with encoding all done at a software level on your PC. This means that while encoding, anything you do on the PC will cause your processor to limit the resources for the encode, and depending on the capture rate and other variables, you'll usually get dropped frames leading to audio desync issues that will render the resulting video perfectly useless.
If you buy the conexant, run it on a dedicated box/OS to ensure results.

[hrlslcbr]

I don't agree with you. It has been confirmed that the 550 pro chip is a FULL hardware encoder. The CPU is used to DECODE the incoming MPEG-2 signal. ATI never said the cards were MPEG DEcoders, but only ENcoders.

[satnav4]

Plus I discovered the delightful MPEG hardware encoder does press your processor into action when encoding, despite claims to the contrary! When I plugged a composite signal in: I had processor use of 40 to 75%! Card only hardware encodes signal entering via the antenna. Hauppauge does not document this. I believe someone on this list mentioned the same thing with the 550 Pro and an xbox console.

I know for a fact the 550 encodes through S-Video in hardware; I just confirmed this using BTV. The 150 also hardware encodes through S-Video. I suspect the high CPU usage is explained by WinTV 2000 preview mode.

S.

[jonaslasky]

I don't agree with you. It has been confirmed that the 550 pro chip is a FULL hardware encoder. The CPU is used to DECODE the incoming MPEG-2 signal. ATI never said the cards were MPEG DEcoders, but only ENcoders.

I had to laugh out loud when I read this.... I must have repeated this about ten times already. I'm glad somebody else is taking this on... even if not all of us have understood it yet I really think some of the problems here are unrelated to whatever tuner card is being used. My previous tuner card was a cheapo AverMedia software ONLY card... but I never experience any of the nightmares some people here have described.

So glad to see some of us have warmed up to BeyondTV... it really is fabulous.

Jonas

[digitalravi]

.......Michael is still lurking here and will spill the beans on SECAM before 2006. Or 2007........
digitalravi, PAL cards are in Europe. There's overclockers.uk, as someone mentioned uplist, and there's komplett:
http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.asp?sku=306371&s=sc

.............I remain interested because the tuner spec supports multi-frequency, so in an ideal world driver support should follow. One day. 2008?
Seems there is STILL no multi-format TV card with hardware MPEG encoding, working on ALL inputs (antenna, composite, s-video) out there.......

Thanks for responding.
I already have a three year old Proline Pixelview Pro card, which is based on a Conexant Bt878 chip. In the usage of this card (which is a basic tuner with no additional features), I experienced all the dropping frames and the CPU based software encoding issues. Then I upgraded to AIW 9800 pro. It was a good card and gives me nice experience, but would not tune all the channels perfectly.

Now I think of an upgrade because I want a tuner with hardware MPEG encoding and I also read in this thread that 550 can tune almost all the channels received over the cable reasonably well. Now this time my new tuner should be a PAL version, because I am going to use elsewhere and not in Tokyo.

Also, as you pointed out, if I buy a Leadtek or any other Conexant based card, I will be back with all the software encoding/dropping frame problems, if I want my CPU to do anything else apart from MPEG encoding. So buying a Conexant based card is not an upgrade in a pratical sense for me. Hence I am craving for buying a 550 based card. But trouble starts in the very purchase process of the 550, forget about the troubles in using the card.

Yes PAL verions of 550 are available in overclockers.co.uk and Komplett.no Overclokers.uk are ready to ship to several countries outside Europe like US, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. But unfortunately, they donot have Japan in their list. I am writing to Overclockers.uk to find out whether they can ship to Japan. They otherway, if they wont ship to Tokyo, is to get the card from Sweden through my friends. This is a very long route.

What my sixth sense cautions me is that there are already many poor souls out there who craved for this card and ended up with frustation, for one reason or another. Having known this, why should I burn my wallet and import it all the way from Europe.....? Of course, unless if I am determined to join the elite club of 550 victims...!

Your time line of a decent driver support from ATI extends unto 2006, 2008...! By that time I suppose ATI will bring out Theater 5500, and 550 will become history.

[Smahatma]

So glad to see some of us have warmed up to BeyondTV... it really is fabulous.

Jonas

I bow down to the web admin interface -- lets me schedule recordings remotely or do a showsqueeze to wmv for streaming through WMServices [built into win2k3]

[satnav4]

So glad to see some of us have warmed up to BeyondTV... it really is fabulous.
Jonas

I have to admit BTV is pretty slick. I like the remote program feature that allows scheduling from any internet connected computer. One feature I wish it had is the ability to set different bitrates for each recording. Sometimes I have many things set to record, only one of which I want to keep. Keepers are always recorded by me at a higher bitrate. GBPVR has this feature, it just doesn't run the 550 yet.

digitalravi

Your only real choices are the ATI 550 based cards and the Hauppauge 150. I have both and like both. The 150 is probably as good as it is going to get. The 550 can probably get better if the drivers and software applications catch up with it. Given that the Theater 200 chip is still used in the AIW cards, don't expect ATI to phase out the 550 chip any time soon.

S.

[SHSPVR]

satnav4 nope the audio was dead last time I check and I have scan any thing else work better then BeyondTV.
But the ver I try was I think was 0.9.05 but I start to move to new place so I didn't have time to mess with ver 0.9.11 and hoping to be finsh moving by the end of the week.

[jscheide]

iuvcr ($27) does work well with my theatrix. I can record in avi (divx or xvid) and wmv in full 720 * 480 resolution with no sync or fast motion problems.
Ican evan record from the composite or svideo connectors that powercinema
wont.

the picture is still not nearly as sharp as my winfast deluxe and iuvcr doesn't
seem to be able to record in mpeg2

[hrlslcbr]

You CAN capture from composite and S-Video with powercinema...

I had to laugh out loud when I read this....

What? My reply? Why?