Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[spacded]

Is The 650 PRO EVER going to be released in Uk/Europe
PAL region?

Or has every manufacturer decided to pass on it?

not one company website EVEN mentions this chips existence apart from ATI who i believe make their own.

Maybe its not a money spinner , wouild like to have at least tried it out

[Octavean]

It has been reported that the TV Wonder 650 can no longer be setup and configured as an analog + digital card in the latest Vista RTM build thus forcing either ONLY analog or ONLY digital install / configuration / usage in Vista MCE.

We know that the TV Wonder 650 is a Vista Premium logo part but the lack of specificity in how ATI intends the TV Wonder part to function in Vista MCE (analog + digital or only analog or only digital) leaves the current users and respective future buyers at a serious disadvantage.

It really is high time that this question be answered considering that Vista is fast becoming available with some MSDN and Connect members already reporting availability and acquisition. There has even been a reported leak of the final build 6000.16386.061101-2205 and orders for FREE Vista upgrades (and pay upgrades) are being taken now here for serialized redemption form upgrade coupon holders (and soon non-serialized redemption form upgrade coupon holders ~November 20, 2006) :

http://upgradeweb.moduslink.com/Vista/

I suppose this question could be ignored too or should I say again but it is quite legitimate IMO so I sincerely hope that “Bill T” has the testicular fortitude to address the question in some way much less in some semblance of an intelligent answer!

By all means, answer the easy questions but tackle some tough ones too,….

[denyart]

I firmly agree that an answer to this question is in order if they want to treat current buyers with as much fairness as possible. If they know this is only going to be an analog or only digital in Vista they should say so. On the other hand if it is still up in air they should at least point out the fact that it hasn't been decided. If it works as it does in MCE 2005 that would be okay, but with the number of hybrid tuners on (or nearly on) the market I would be surprised if the final Vista build didn't do something to account for these devices. If functionality is lost in Vista I would be disappointed.

[vddobrev]

About the stand by issue: I logged a new ticket today.
I upgraded my PC! I was long wanting to move to PCI-E, and finally did it - I got:
Intel D975XBX
Core 2 E6600 2.4GHz
2GB PC6400
GeForce 7950GT

I was so pissed when the stand by issue happened as well on the new PC. I called ATI tech support, and spoke with a senior representative. Told him the story, and he said he will escalate the issue. Let's see what happens next.

About Vista, I still have the bad taste of Windows XP when it first came out. I installed it immediately, and I regret it - it had relatively high number of bugs. I am not gonna make the same mistake with Vista. Just my personal opinion.

[dabl]

Bill T, me three on Vista RTM compatability status please.

[MarkA]

Does the TV Wonder 650 (which I own) work in a PCI-E slot as well as PCI, or do you have to buy another card with a PCI-E interface? I read before I bought the card that it worked in either slot.

Mark

About the stand by issue: I logged a new ticket today.
I upgraded my PC! I was long wanting to move to PCI-E, and finally did it - I got:
Intel D975XBX
Core 2 E6600 2.4GHz
2GB PC6400
GeForce 7950GT

I was so pissed when the stand by issue happened as well on the new PC. I called ATI tech support, and spoke with a senior representative. Told him the story, and he said he will escalate the issue. Let's see what happens next.

About Vista, I still have the bad taste of Windows XP when it first came out. I installed it immediately, and I regret it - it had relatively high number of bugs. I am not gonna make the same mistake with Vista. Just my personal opinion.

[Super XP]

Does the TV Wonder 650 (which I own) work in a PCI-E slot as well as PCI, or do you have to buy another card with a PCI-E interface? I read before I bought the card that it worked in either slot.

Mark

You will have to buy another card for PCI-E x1 & x4 support. though I think the PCI-E x1 version fits into a x4 slot & a x8 to x16 if I am not mistaken.

But PCI ? no it will not be compatable at all.

[MarkA]

You will have to buy another card for PCI-E x1 & x4 support. though I think the PCI-E x1 version fits into a x4 slot & a x8 to x16 if I am not mistaken.

But PCI ? no it will not be compatable at all.

Super XP, Thanks! I suspected as much . . .

Mark

[Octavean]

Ummmm,… was there a new ATI Theater 550 PRO/650 PRO Driver posted on Nov 15, 2006,…..?

My latest drivers report as v6.14.10.199 and the ones up now at AMD / ATI are listed as v6.14.10.206,….

Still no Vista drivers though,....

[vddobrev]

I tried v6.14.10.206, the stand by issue is not resolved.

[denyart]

Was there any noticeable change in anything with the new driver?

[vddobrev]

Was there any noticeable change in anything with the new driver?

Not really.

[denyart]

I have noticed an occasional recording that doesn't work with my 650s. It will either make the recording and have a corrupt file that causes media center to crash when I try to play it, or it will have no recording or a recording with bad audio (all examples I have seen so far). I may try the new drivers to see if that goes away. I really wish we could get some notes about what these different drivers are supposed to be for and what things they know about that these drivers don't fix yet.

[vddobrev]

I have noticed an occasional recording that doesn't work with my 650s. It will either make the recording and have a corrupt file that causes media center to crash when I try to play it, or it will have no recording or a recording with bad audio (all examples I have seen so far). I may try the new drivers to see if that goes away. I really wish we could get some notes about what these different drivers are supposed to be for and what things they know about that these drivers don't fix yet.

Hmm, strange. I have never gotten a bad recording or a corrupt file.

[Octavean]

Corrupt recordings or blank recordings could be caused by the non-concurrent limitation of the TV Wonder 650. In other words, using both analog / digital tuners at the same time will result in a “garbage in garbage out” situation for at least one of the concurrent recordings.

Audio related issues (static) seem to be linked to having two TV Wonder 650 cards on the same system but not necessarily limited to a 2x TV Wonder 650 config. Over at the “Snapstream” forums and the “thegreenbutton” forums users have reported no audio (static) with the TV Wonder 650 under some circumstances.

[MarkA]

Has anyone found a way to make this card work with Windows 2000? I don't know why they wouldn't have written a driver for W2K. It's still supported by MS. This would be a big plus. I'm running 4 Operating Systems on my computer. I know it's only supported in XP, but just curious.

Mark