Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[Bill T]

Hi Seraphic-,

NTSC standard is 720x480, and I'm not sure why you need to chang it to 640x480. I'm not sure if the 550 would do the same thing. If you let mw know the name of the software, I might be able to dig into this for you a little further.
And if you are having any problems with your current TV Wonder 650, call ATI Support, and they will be able to help you.
The new ATI Driver should still work with the old card version. I just tried it myself to make sure. What is the problem you are having with the new driver?

Hey Zob,
From what I had just posted,

ATI has not announced official support for CMC on AIW and previous generation TV Wonder products

, like the AIW X1900. That doesn't mean that it won't work at all, it will probly work fine as you said. But since we do not officially support it, there may be some minor problems that may go unresolved. But since CMC is only available with the TV Wonder 650, and 200, you should not even have to worry about this. <-- That's what prevents you from using CMC on you AIW X1900.

Hey buddydogs11,
What video card are you using? How is the component cables connected ie: VGA-Component, DVI-Component, TV out port-Component ?
Also, did this work before with an old tuner card?

Octavean,
I'll se what I can do about getting this issue resolved.

[dabl]

Well i picked up the 650 today at the local best buy.The card it self looks very nice,but i have problem.I can`t get video overlay(Theatre mode) to work with catalyst media center.I have my PC hooked to my HDTV via component cables and like to surf web while watching TV.

Wow, I wonder if this is the first sighting of the fixed version....

Could you please check your box for a product number? Of interest would be either of the following two numbers

100-703261
100-715331

Are you by chance using it with an off the air antenna for HD/ATSC signals and if so does the reception seem pretty good?

I don't know if you've been following the thread but the original product (100-703261) has been recalled due to poor HD reception issues and a new one (apparently) issued. Again, if you got one of the new ones, this is the first word if it I've seen.

--Don

[buddydogs11]

Hi bill,I have an Sapphire AGP X1600 Pro.Useing catalyst 6.6 drivers lastest version i can use without problem,i have tried 6.7 thru 6.9 video overlay(theatre mode) was not working right for me with DTV.

I use TV out port-Component.

Yes, theatre mode in cat 6.6 drivers works fine with my old twinhan tuner (digital/anolog). windows media player,power dvd ,ect. ,but with catalyst media center i dont see an option to enable it.

The quality of video on the 650 is great a big improvment over my old tuner card.

[buddydogs11]

dabl,

The # on the box is 100-715331

No problems pulling in all local HD/ATSC

I know my local Best Buy pulled the first batch cards a couple of weeks ago,so this is new or fixed version.

I did notice on the board i have, on the back of the board there is 2 tiny wires up by the antenna inputs that look like they were added in after the board was built.

[Octavean]

dabl,

The # on the box is 100-715331

No problems pulling in all local HD/ATSC

I know my local Best Buy pulled the first batch cards a couple of weeks ago,so this is new or fixed version.

I did notice on the board i have, on the back of the board there is 2 tiny wires up by the antenna inputs that look like they were added in after the board was built.

This is one of the reasons I asked if recalled boards where going to be reworked and reintroduced into the market as new or refurbished. Having some post work done on the board after manufacture isn’t necessarily an indication that the cards was used but it is a clear indication that a rework / revision was made,…correcting a flaw.

However, I have heard that some of the earlier revision boards that were recalled had such a quick rework as well. In any case, it almost seems that the older revision and the newer revision may only differ by “2 tiny wires” reworked onto the board,….!?!

This is also why I asked about serial numbers of effected boards as a means to distinguish them from the newer batch,… However, if all that distinguishes the new from the old is indeed “2 tiny wires” there wouldn’t necessarily be any way to discriminate between cards via serial number,…. Untill possibly the older stock has been sold and a newer board revision comes into play,….

[zob]

Thanks for the reply. The information you tell me is useful. One of the reasons I am asking is, since I'm using the All in Wonder X1900 and would like to use the TV Wonder 650 for the high-definition TV tuner. Will the two TV tuner cards play well together on the same computer? And if so which software would you use or could you have both media center programs on the same computer together? The All in Wonder X1900 works fairly well as a TV tuner, but the picture quality is nothing to get excited about. There's a couple of irritating glitches in the Media Center software. One of which, every time you hit a mono station then go back to a stereo station the tuner stays in the mono mode. Another glitch is the Remote Wonder Plus guide button does nothing. It is the same if you use the furnished CD or download the new drivers off the Internet. I have reported both of these incidents to ATI and they say they're aware of the problem but there's no known resolution at this time.

[dabl]

I know my local Best Buy pulled the first batch cards a couple of weeks ago,so this is new or fixed version.

Cool, thanks! So what was the price?

[Bill T]

The 2 tiny wires are on both versions of the board, I'm not sure if there is any visual difference between the 2 boards. I can't see anything. The serial number, and OTA HD issues seem to be the only ways to distinguish between them.

buddydogs11,
I Just tried to reproduce your problem here, I had it working with Catalyst 6.4, then I updated it to Catalyst 6.9, I am not seeing any overlay issues. Can you be more specific in what you are doing. I'll try my best to find the problem.

Zob,
I see what you are trying to do. This should work with CMC, but since there is no "Official Support" for the AIW cards, I can't really guarentee you that it will work. To make it simple, it works, but if there is any problems with it, ATI probably won't do anything about it untill it is officially supported. If it ever is.

[buddydogs11]

Bill,
I am trying to put catalyst media center in "Theatre mode" so video would be full screen on TV and could be minimized on PC monitor,the way it is now it has to be on both screens,if i am surfing web or any thing else on PC i cant watch video on tv.

dabl,
The price at best buy was $134

[buddydogs11]

Bill,
After many hours spent,the problem was that when i turned on catalyst media center,it was tuning off theatre mode on the video card,so went in to X1600 control panel and turned theatre mode on while cmc was running, it switched cmc to theatre mode .That is what i wanted.Thanks for your help.

Update

Every time catalyst media center is opened it disables theatre mode,hopefully there will be a patch for this.

[fdisker]

Hi Bill,

I picked up the re-released Theater 650 at Best Buy last night and I'm happy to report that it's working as expected. All the digital channels I received with my HDTV Wonder are picked up with the 650 using the same antenna. I'm very pleased with the analog picture quality improvements provided by the new card.

One last question ... will two cards work in the same machine? I'd like to add another 650 for dual analog and digital tuners. I'm using MCE, not CMC.

[Octavean]

Hi Bill,

I picked up the re-released Theater 650 at Best Buy last night and I'm happy to report that it's working as expected. All the digital channels I received with my HDTV Wonder are picked up with the 650 using the same antenna. I'm very pleased with the analog picture quality improvements provided by the new card.

One last question ... will two cards work in the same machine? I'd like to add another 650 for dual analog and digital tuners. I'm using MCE, not CMC.

Fdisker, that’s a good question, albeit not directed to me specifically let me just say:

If you have the MCE 2K5 “Rollup 2” installed you shouldn’t have any issues installing MCE 2K5 supported 2x analog tuners and 2x digital tuners for an effective 4 tuner setup. Therefore, 2x Theater 650 Pro cards should work and be detected as 2x analog and 2x digital during configuration within MCE 2K5, Vista RC1 build 5600 and up should auto prompt within Vista MCE for configuration after physical install.

However, depending on how MCE allocates primary analog and digital tuners on the installed Theater 650 Pro cards you may see the error message that Bill T posted. This would occur if, for example, the analog tuner on card_1 were assigned as primary analog (watch/record first) and the digital tuner on card_1 were also assigned as primary digital (watch/record first). In such a case, Theater 650 Pro card_1 will always be used first for both analog and digital watch/record requests. Dual analog should function normally and so too should dual digital functionality (because this is spanned across card_1 and card_2) however a simultaneous analog / digital request would default to card_1 which is not permissible due to the concurrent tuner hardware limitation of the Theater 650 Pro.

With any luck the default MCE 2K5 configuration of a 2x Theater 650 Pro setup would set card_1 analog as primary, card_1 digital as secondary, card_2 analog as secondary and card_2 digital as primary. Such a configuration would allow for dual analog, dual digital and 1x analog + 1x digital functionality (only).

If the default Theater 650 Pro configuration is not setup accordingly, one would then need to either go into the registry manually to configure it thusly or use a utility to achieve the same effect. In either case it should be relatively easy to accomplish.

Do keep in mind that 2x analog + 1x digital or 2x digital + 1x analog is not admissible in such a setup.

[fdisker]

Yup, got it. I'm perfectly willing to hack the registry to set a default analog/digital tuner priority. I just wanted to hear from ATI as to whether two 650s will peacefully coexist in the same machine. If so, I'm getting another one. I'm quite happy with the re-released card.

[zob]

fdisker, which version MCE are you usingwith 650?

[fdisker]

MCE 2K5 w/rollup 2 and all other updates. I completely wiped my box last night and reinstalled everything ... something I used to do with alarming regularity when I was younger and how I got the nickname fdisker amongst my circle of geek friends. There are very few problems a good fdisk -> reinstall won't solve

[Octavean]

Yup, got it. I'm perfectly willing to hack the registry to set a default analog/digital tuner priority. I just wanted to hear from ATI as to whether two 650s will peacefully coexist in the same machine. If so, I'm getting another one. I'm quite happy with the re-released card.

Well considering that one Theater 650 Pro doesn’t function properly in MCE 2K5 with respect to successfully initiating proper tuner conflict management (notification and negotiation), I really don’t see how two could classify as “peacefully coexisting”.

Still I too am somewhat interested in what ATI has to say in this respect.

Although, it is worth noting that the use of one or more Theater 650 Pro cards in a single system could put someone in the category of “early adopter” and as such puts the user in the position of finding oddities and bugs on their own regardless of any endorsement that the manufacturer could give.

Still, I have little doubt that the new Theater 650 Pro performs admirably in most cases and have gone back and forth on whether or not to buy one.