Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[SHSPVR]

Thanks Mike so both Motion compensated noise reduction and Edge enhancement should give 650 a big egde over other PVR card.

[Octavean]

- you can receive both NTSC and ATSC, but there's still only one encoder so you can't watch one, while recording another using only one Theater 650 Pro

Understood,…

However, how then will MCE 2K5 and other multi-tuner (NTSC/ATSC aware) applications manage this deficiency? For example, the same situation exists with the HDTV Wonder wherein only NTSC or ATSC can be used at any given time but MCE only officially functions with the ATSC component. Enabling the NTSC tuner functionality of the HDTV Wonder in MCE is possible but this doesn’t overcome the NTSC/ATSC limitation. Simply put, if a scheduled recording uses the analog and digital tuner components of the HDTV Wonder simultaneously only one can obviously be used successfully.

Therefore:

Will the Theater 650 Pro be truncated in some way in these applications only allowing it to be installed and setup as either a NTSC or ATSC card but not both???

If the Theater 650 Pro can be installed and setup to function as both a NTSC and ATSC card in such applications, what logic will be used to prevent conflicts resulting in missed recordings???

[jonaslasky]

If the Theater 650 Pro can be installed and setup to function as both a NTSC and ATSC card in such applications, what logic will be used to prevent conflicts resulting in missed recordings???

Good question.

I guess if you only have the 650 in your system, it's not so complicated. You know you can only record one show in any given time period, so you wouldn't schedule two recordings at the same time. But if you have the 650 and another HD tuner.... how would a DVR application differentiate between the HD tuner and the 650's HD section? I guess you'd have to specify which tuner you want for a particular recording. Otherwise, if it grabs the 650 for the first recording, there wouldn't be an analog tuner left for an analog recording at a later time. Either that or it would grab 650's analog section, terminating your HD recording prematurely.

But then maybe it's not that complicated.

Jonas

[Octavean]

Good question.

I guess if you only have the 650 in your system, it's not so complicated. You know you can only record one show in any given time period, so you wouldn't schedule two recordings at the same time. But if you have the 650 and another HD tuner.... how would a DVR application differentiate between the HD tuner and the 650's HD section? I guess you'd have to specify which tuner you want for a particular recording. Otherwise, if it grabs the 650 for the first recording, there wouldn't be an analog tuner left for an analog recording at a later time. Either that or it would grab 650's analog section, terminating your HD recording prematurely.

But then maybe it's not that complicated.

Jonas

Even if the Theater 650 Pro is the only tuner in the system it could be a good deal more complicated then one might expect initially.

Using MCE as an example:

The user isn’t necessarily always aware of what recordings are pending and when. One of the features of a quality PVR is not having to know the details of the “what, when and where (channel)” of recordings. Even if a user tries to keep abreast of all scheduled recordings it can quickly get complicated and erroneous recordings can occur as well if not configured properly.

Also keep in mind that lead-in and lead-out recording time as well as time overlaps can occur and cause problems as well.

Then there is the issue of tuner allocation and logic of the PVR.

MCE, for example, assigns tuner priority in a multi-tuner system (seemingly arbitrarily) by allocating a primary and secondary tuner. In the case of a HDTV Wonder installed with a Theater 550 Pro under MCE you have a 1x SD + 1x HD tuner configuration. Enabling the SD tuner on the HDTV Wonder results in the HDTV Wonder’s SD tuner being assigned as the primary tuner. This means that all SD watching and recording will take place on the HDTV Wonder SD tuner first and the Theater 550 Pro will only be used if the former SD tuner is in use. In such a configuration, dual SD recording can take place but SD + HD cannot because both SD + HD functionality of the HDTV Wonder would be used by default. One must manually assign the Theater 550 Pro to be the primary tuner to allow for both dual SD recording and SD + HD recording. However, in such a configuration the user must still be sure that all three tuners are not used simultaneously. If a second HD tuner is installed it should be possible to assign it as the primary ATSC tuner which would allow for a triple simultaneous SD + SD +HD recording but again all four tuners cannot be used at the same time due to the limitations of the HDTV Wonder.

Basically put, MCE 2K5 isn’t aware of the limitations of the HDTV Wonder and recording conflicts can occur because of it. Perhaps this is why ATI truncated the HDTV Wonder functionality under MCE in the first place by only officially allowing the use of the ATSC tuner. I don’t see how this would change for the Theater 650 Pro.

I need to know how ATI plans to deal with this issue.

[Octavean]

www.anandtech.com has a brief write up on the Theater 650 Pro called:

The New Theater 650 TV Tuner Solution from ATI

Wish I had the time to read it now.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
So regarding all this about mixing SD and HD, Theater 650 Pro will let you watch both on MCE. So you can just switch channels to whatever SD or HD ones you have. Regarding recording scenarios with other tuners, I'll have to try some things and will get back to you about it. If there are issues though, they would most likely be caused by MCE rather than the card because the app has to take care of what tuner is used for what recording. Regarding lead-in, lead-out times, it's again mostly an app thing, but don't forget you can only watch/record one thing at a time. So you can kind of ignore whether it's HD or SD and just think of it as one recording at a time.

[SHSPVR]

Josh at Anandtech still dose it wrong

One thing I really hate more then anything is the fact that min reviewer are so lazy in the cheating game by using the PrtScn Button and do not do ture original video RAW decode MPEG screenshot in the rigth application software like Womble MPEG-VCR are best to get real screenshot and they always seem to be using MCE DVR-MS proprietary video and audio format carp what matter are they just to lazy in using other PVR software or GraphEdit to get real MPEG files but as we all know that the NVIDIA DualTV is not option with GraphEdit which has no exposes advanced features properties.

2nd problem as today no body turely using low bitrate under 4MBit/sec which is more reasonable testing to see how well it really dose encoding without artifacts.

So you wondering why I said cheating well each encoder dose there video difference from each other and there for the decoder filter display difference in case depend on the clean up filter like Deinterlace, difference Enhanced Video Processing Technologies which get apply on top the MPEG Video.

As for a real encoding comparison all test they should done with the fellowing device
VCR, Stardard Antenna TV, CableTV Analogue/Digital and Satellite with fellowing output source S-Video/Composite and Tuner and you need do Cartoon as well as reg video show

I just love CPU Utilization part is really useless becuase all of today Video card are still mostly base on 3rdparty SW-Decoder which mean you still need fast CPU unlike a ture HW-Decoder which provides a real decoding performance unlike today video card which only do part HW-accelerated decoding not full HW-decoding.
Let say for Example you have Intel P3 800MHz runing 2000Pro or XP with 512MB and you can chosse from GeForce"4" MX4000 or GeForce"7" 7800 becuase you want upgarde your old ATI 3D RAGE PRO 4MB what do you think you see in CPU Utilization from the two card newer card.

[Octavean]

Hi,
So regarding all this about mixing SD and HD, Theater 650 Pro will let you watch both on MCE. So you can just switch channels to whatever SD or HD ones you have.

Well one would really expect such a thing to be seamless and trouble free. Its when recording becomes an issue that problems can arise not simply watching TV.

Regarding recording scenarios with other tuners, I'll have to try some things and will get back to you about it. If there are issues though, they would most likely be caused by MCE rather than the card because the app has to take care of what tuner is used for what recording. Regarding lead-in, lead-out times, it's again mostly an app thing, but don't forget you can only watch/record one thing at a time. So you can kind of ignore whether it's HD or SD and just think of it as one recording at a time.

But there in is the rub. If an application like MCE isn’t aware of the inherent limitations of the Theater 650 Pro it will more then likely step outside its workable bounds resulting in corrupted or missed recordings.

There are ways to avoid this but it may be best if ATI worked with companies like Microsoft to assure the best user experience.

Basically, if a global rule is setup to prevent simultaneous NTSC/ATSC recordings on the Theater 650 Pro and generate an error message when such an attempt is made the problem will be successfully avoided. This is not the case with the HDTV Wonder when both NTSC/ATSC components are enabled in MCE. Granted, it is an unsupported configuration but it does illustrate what can go wrong when a card is not capable of dual simultaneous recordings and has both NTSC/ATSC functionality.

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
First of all I'd just like to encourage anyone reading this tread to check out the AnandTech review posted above. It does a pretty good job at covering most major points and it is an independent 3rd party so it would be pretty unbiased.

Next I'd like to clarify some phrasing in the last few posts that's a bit misleading. As I have said, the Theater 650 Pro can watch/record one thing at a time and describing this as a "deficiency" or "limitation" is not quite accurate. The product does exactly what it's supposed to do. If what it does isn't everything that a user wants, doesn't mean the product is deficient in any way, but rather not sufficient for that particular user. There, I just wanted to get that out of the way for the people unfamiliar with this product so that they don't get any wrong impressions.

Now regarding the Microsoft thing, for the record ATI works with Microsoft and other app makers to do our best to make sure our products work with these apps. However don't forget that MCE is fairly rigid and you can't expect it to be patched like some other app. However, we're doing everything possible to make sure everything works.

[bubbaganoush]

There's a chat going on now at Rage3d with a couple guys from the ATI AIW and TV Wonder team.

<Ratchet> digitalwanderer - QUESTION: Are there any plans to offer more user control over the picture settings? Similar to the new viddy features in nVidia's new control panel with the edge sharpness & noise reduction features?
<JasonAndBlair> Well, since this this multimedia, I'll talk about our capture products. The Theater 650 Pro announcements to press mentioned that we'll have a new applet for changing all of the features of the Theater 650 Pro video decoder. That includes noise reduction, 3d comb tweaks, etc. So yes.

[dabl]

I'm currently using a bare bones driver and app to capture firewire from a Samsung HLR-6167 (off the air antenna feed) to PC and editing the captured .TS/.TP files with VideoReDo and saving them out to .MPG (still HD) for archival to DVD-R as standard files.

Can anyone comment on the likelyhood of the HD part of this card used under BeyondTV for recording, writing a standard single .ts/.tp file for any given recording of an ATSC stream so I can do the same, but using BeyondTV as my frontend?

From reading some of the HDTV Wonder threads I got the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that it wrote some sort of non-standard files for the HD recordings, broken up into seperate smaller files for any given scheduled recording of an ATSC stream, but perhaps those comments were referring to using the card with the included ATI recording app and not BeyondTV....

Thanks for any comments.

[Octavean]

“Inherent Limitation”

Inherent : involved in the constitution or essential character of something : belonging by nature or habit: inborn

Limitation : the quality or state of being limited : something that impedes

The fact that the Theater 650 Pro is NTSC/ATSC capable is impressive. The fact that the Theater 650 Pro cannot use its NTSC/ATSC features simultaneously is an acceptable design “limitation”,…..an “Inherent Limitation”. This is not simply an opinion but rather a classic example of the very definition of the term.

Having said this, it doesn’t mean that the Theater 650 Pro is flawed or broken.

In terms of any "deficiency" with respect to software and how it works with this product’s given “limitation” is something that should be answered definitely.

Simply put, if MCE and other multi-tuner applications have some semblance of logic or mechanism in place to prevent both NTSC/ATSC functionality of the T650P from being used simultaneously,…..then great,…all is well!!!

If not, then we have a problem mate.

Testing how software such as MCE works with the T650P should be very easy.

[SHSPVR]

http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst...nter/demo.html

[Octavean]

In the past the AVIVO Conversion Utility has been exclusively offered only to X1000 series users. Does the inclusion of the AVIVO Conversion Utility with Catalyst Media Center require an X1000 series card or is only a T650P necessary?

Are there any CMC features that require ATI hardware other then a T650P?

[blakev]

Hi folks, been a while, just a quick question, Mike I had a 550 Pro and sent it back for a couple of reasons, buried back there in ye monster thread. Here I see the new 650 Pro with a deee-lightful claim rearing it's head: that is, NTSC/PAL/SECAM ready (on analogue, of course). Now you answered rainbow quite clearly. However, there's a nuance.
When I had the 550Pro PAL card, I tried to run some SECAM video on composite into it. No luck, completely demodulated and more or less black and white. Question: will the PAL card manage SECAM composite input (or vice versa)? Or shall I need two cards, one for SECAM and one for PAL?

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Just some more quick responses:
- the transcoder in CMC does not require an X1k graphics card
- no features in CMC, which will ship with Theater 650 Pro products, require additional hardware to work properly

blakev, the PAL/SECAM card will all be part of one product. So it's definitely meant to do both.

Octavean, I know what those words mean, but you have to keep in mind some people on these forums don't speak English very well. So I didn't want someone to misunderstand and so clarified that there's nothing wrong or defective about the new chip. Thanks for the definitions though!