Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[SHSPVR]

spacded you forgot one major thing about PCIe the bandwidth is not shared the same way as in PCI, so there is far less congestion on the bus and it also run in Both Directions and has much greater bandwidth than basic PCI.
But there are pros and cons to this PCIe so unless your a hard core game then move to PCIe is kind of a waste of time unless your getting a new system.
And PCIe Architecture is way a head it time in fact most of the part on motherboard are still base on LEGACY Architecture dating back to 80's so in the real world you only see marginal performance increase depend on what you doing with it.
YUP vapourware bitboys ring and any bells hehehehe.

[Seraphic-]

SHSPVR, i'm not really a gamer. I'm looking to just capture video as of now. So you would suggest PCI is just as good as PCIE for that?

Also, I have a question:

I was looking over the Theater 550 posts on newegg.com and found one saying you can't capture video when using S-Video as the input and that you can only view the video.

Is that true and would it be the same for the 650?

[fanbanlo]

SHSPVR, i'm not really a gamer. I'm looking to just capture video as of now. So you would suggest PCI is just as good as PCIE for that?

Also, I have a question:

I was looking over the Theater 550 posts on newegg.com and found one saying you can't capture video when using S-Video as the input and that you can only view the video.

Is that true and would it be the same for the 650?

PLEASE go for PCI-E if your MB supports.

2nd part: not true, even the good-old MMC can record from S-video/Composit, but you can't capture AND watch cable TV as the same time.. I guess that's what the website trying to say?

[Seraphic-]

It doesn't
However, the 650 will be the only PCI card I have. At least this way it gets all the bandwidth.

It wasn't really newegg that posted that. It was just a user leaving feedback on a 550 card.

[fanbanlo]

It doesn't
However, the 650 will be the only PCI card I have. At least this way it gets all the bandwidth.

It wasn't really newegg that posted that. It was just a user leaving feedback on a 550 card.

that's not the real reason.. but if you're planning to save this card for your Next computer, then you'll have to know your next computer would very likely NOT have PCI slots (or more than 1).

but if your current MB doesn't support PCI-e, then I guess PCI is what you're getting~

[Seraphic-]

I'm thinking about building a new system so I might end up with a PCI-E. However, I have a bad feeling that the PCI version will be out long before PCI-E version is.

[hrlslcbr]

I'm thinking about building a new system so I might end up with a PCI-E. However, I have a bad feeling that the PCI version will be out long before PCI-E version is.

And I have a bad feeling that it will never come out... (both PCI and PCIe)

[SHSPVR]

When come to 550 or 650 it really dosen't matter when come Hardware MPEG Encoder Video capture card there more then enough PCI bandwidth for up to 12 tuners or 6 DualTuner cards in a Media Server and some Client, but what would make a diff if this was going to be RAW AVI capture which need much greater bandwidth but the weack link we still have with AVI Capture are slow hard drive wite speed.
It really make no diff if go with PCI version or PCIe version but as fanbanlo point out if your planning to save this card for your Next computer which may only come with PCIe slot it maybe good idea to go with PCIe version in long run being the newer latest motherboard are start to drop more PCI slot and add more PCIe 1x slot which now 3 PCI + 3 PCIe as add-on card start come in PCIe version so it maybe 3 to 5 more years before we see only PCIe base motherboard but who know this is also change from year to year so i thard to say what can happing.

I was looking over the Theater 550 posts on newegg.com and found one saying you can't capture video when using S-Video as the input and that you can only view the video.

Not ture

[hrlslcbr]

I was looking over the Theater 550 posts on newegg.com and found one saying you can't capture video when using S-Video as the input and that you can only view the video.

Not ture

I agree. Absolutely false. Actually, I hardly capture with composite now, so unless I'm too stupid to realise I haven't been capturing anything, it's not true.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Just a few quick comments:
Jake123, wow man do you have some imagination or what. Have you ever considered being a writer or something (maybe a conspiracy writer?). So no, we don't have an AI machine this sophisticated and I have to respond to all of you manually. Nice joke, but lets try to keep to the topic on hand please

spacded, I'm not sure what the partners are doing since they are separate companies and they run themselves. So I only make comments on ATI-specific things.

Regarding this recent S-video capture discussion, I'd like to close that. Both Theater 550 Pro and Theater 650 Pro products are capable of capturing both Composite and S-Video and if someone is having trouble doing that, they're welcome to post up their difficulties here and we can try to help them out.

[fanbanlo]

Multimedia Mike:

- Will there be an ATI Catalyst Media Center™ upgrade available for 550 user? Will it be free? or how much?
- Will a X1x00 be required to use the Avivo feature in CMC?
- When will Avivo uses ATI hardware to encode?
- Will it be a slow .NET program like CCC?

Thank you MM~

[Octavean]

Fanbanlo, some of these questions were already addressed and some were even answered,….somewhat,…

Will there be an ATI Catalyst Media Center™ upgrade available for 550 user? Will it be free? or how much?

CMC will supposedly work with the T550P but how it is released other then with T650P cards has not yet been detailed.

Will a X1x00 be required to use the Avivo feature in CMC?

It has already been explained that a T650P will allow the user to basically take advantage of the full feature set of CMC. So, no X1000 family product is necessary.

When will Avivo uses ATI hardware to encode?

This hasn’t been covered yet but the AVIVO transcode utility is already accessible to some non-X1000 family ATI customers in MCE 2K5. The AVIVO transcode utility is also part of CMC and with the full feature set being available to T650P users its clear that the X1000 only mantra has already been broken. How pervasive this change in thinking is with respect to the AVIVO feature set is unknow,…

Will it be a slow .NET program like CCC?

Given ATI’s relationship with Microsoft its not really surprising to see another .net app out of them. However, there is still the possibility that CMC is simply a re-badge app,…

Either way, I don’t think ATI will be too forthcoming in this respect,…as well as some other respects,..

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Just a quick follow up to the responses above (which are appreciated):
- The first two are pretty much all correct
- Regarding your Avivo question, I think you've got a few things confused regarding encoding. Theater 550 Pro and Theater 650 Pro both already do hardware encoding of MPEG2. If you mean the Avivo Video Converter, that's called transcoding or converting. As of right now it is done in software and there is a potential that this might change in the future, but I don't have any information about what's going on with that right now.
- Regarding CMC, I can't really give you detailed information on how it's made, but it is totally different from CCC. So even though they sound alike, they serve very different purposes and so are designed totally separately.

[fanbanlo]

Thank you Multimedia Mike, for your response.

- When will we get CMC upgrade option for T550? right after T650 is officially released?
- Will it be a secure download? or a CD order? from ATI.com's shop?
- Will Avivo Video Converterbe optimized to take advantage of dual core processors?
- Will ATI optimizes CMC for AMD's dual core processors more than Intel's?
- Will Avivo Video Converter offers more advanced option?
- Is Avivo Video Converter engine being licensed for 3rd party video encoder/transcoder?
- Would CMC/Avivo Video Converter running @ 64-bit XP/Vista work faster than running @ 32-bit?

Thank you again!

[Seraphic-]

Talked to both Sapphire abd PowerColor just an hour ago. They are saying late August or early September.

Sapphire said PCI, maybe NOT PCI-E
PowerColor said PCI-E, maybe not PCI

I wish it wasn't taking so long, but it's worth the wait I guess...

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Just some quick responses:
fanbanlo, you're getting too excited, please calm down. Most of your questions are too specific and I'm afraid I either don't have the answer or can't say. Your best bet is to just sit back and see what happens with CMC in the future.
Seraphic-, you should relax a bit too. You'll be able to buy a Theater 650 Pro product before you know it. Stay tuned!