Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[AIW_VID_FAN]

As per the release notes MMC 9.16 only addressed a few issues.

I was suprised ATI addressed an issue with Easylook as I too have only recently had this error, on 2 machines, one running mmc 914 , another 915.
Easylook was disabled on both yet suddenly had the same problem at the launch of MMC, tv.

The 650 analog tuner works the same as with 9.15.
the digital tuner driver is still seen by MMC as "unknown" and will tune digital channels only when manually added to the channel list, I still can add known digital channels but get no audio and a popup error message over video "No Signal". The 650 analog cable tuner looks great, as compared to the
AIW 9700s tuner/T200.
I dont understand why ATI doesn't want to support its best hardware.
I can not run CMC. It's horrible.
I'm sure the problems with CMC are far worse than the effort it would take to get MMC working.

I installed starting with the ATI uninstall util, Installed 9.12 Drivers, 916 uci, enu, etc.
Not suprised.

[Octavean]

As stated before the Vbox Cat’s Eye Dual Hybrid tuner isn’t forced into either analog or digital functionality in Vista MCE like the TV Wonder 650 and HDTV Wonder. This suggest that only some hybrid tuner cards are effected by this and therefore this cannot be simply classified as a hybrid tuner issue in Vista.

There are a number of specifications and suggested design recommendations for both hardware and software (drivers) for such products for proper compliance and I suspect that some willful dismissing of these specs and suggestions resulted in this situation. If this was imposed by Microsoft then they might be doing so to assure a certain level of quality. Non-concurrence may mandate such action and we know what happens when these products are not curbed in this way.

Anyway, for those interested in having both analog and digital functionality of their TV Wonder 650 and HDTV wonder in Vista you might want to try the following methods posted here:

http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/vistahdtvinstall.html

However, the TV Wonder 650 “Erroneous Error Message” bug present in MCE 2K5 might very well then be present in Vista MCE so one should take care to insure that both the analog and digital components of the TV Wonder 650 not be used concurrently.

[DustinHart]

I've got a little bit of cash coming my way and I was wondering what capture card should I get for my capturing needs. What I'm wanting to do is capture standard def TV shows off my satellite box and backing up old VHS tapes to DVD. I understand that the 650 has a better 3D comb filter but is the quality of captures noticeably better over the 550? I'd love to save a few bucks but if the 650's captures look better I'll get it. Any advice?

[Skylark]

BillT, I just found this thread and wanted to post that I too have the S3 standby issue as well with my dual 650s in MCE2005. As you can see, I have a completely different hardware configuration from what some of the other posters have (not an Intel chipset). And it seems to occur with hibernation as well. I'm concerned that this will wreak havoc on my recordings. Someone here said it only affects the live TV card, so would recording be okay? What if it tries to record two programs that come on at the same time? I think the analog TV quality is incredible, but not sure if it's worth this hastle. Maybe the Nvidia DualTV. Has anyone here seen the analog quality of this one? Don't need digital tuning right now.

denyart, I was able to successfully install both cards with the latest .212 drivers. They work perfectly for me (sans the standby issue).

[Super XP]

BillT, I just found this thread and wanted to post that I too have the S3 standby issue as well with my dual 650s in MCE2005. As you can see, I have a completely different hardware configuration from what some of the other posters have (not an Intel chipset). And it seems to occur with hibernation as well. I'm concerned that this will wreak havoc on my recordings. Someone here said it only affects the live TV card, so would recording be okay? What if it tries to record two programs that come on at the same time? I think the analog TV quality is incredible, but not sure if it's worth this hastle. Maybe the Nvidia DualTV. Has anyone here seen the analog quality of this one? Don't need digital tuning right now.

denyart, I was able to successfully install both cards with the latest .212 drivers. They work perfectly for me (sans the standby issue).

No, ATI's 550Pro & now 650Pro are the best for analog quality. But why not do what I do, just hook your 650 Pro onto your TV via S-Video. This is what I do, and the quality is better then watching it on your TV screen. I record my TV shows with super quality, like I was watching a DVD or something.

Take Care,

[Octavean]

The Theater 550 Pro product line has a known “Low audio” bug that ATI hasn’t thus far been able to fix. Some improvements seem to have been made but the issue still seems to exists.

It is unclear to me if the audio issue is present on the cards inputs via s-video and the like. Just consider the possibility that while video input may be good on the T550P audio may leave something to be desired with respect to overall volume.

The TV Wonder 650 (Theater 650) seems somewhat improved in this respect but I cannot yet quantify said improvements due to a lack of testing.

BTW, I recently bought and installed a new Vbox Cat’s Eye 164e Hybrid Dual Configurable and Concurrent ATSC / NTSC PCIe tuner card. I removed the TV Wonder 650 from the MCE system and installed the 164e in its place.

I then installed the TV Wonder 650 in the Vista Test system (specs below). The initial install and manual configuration of the TV Wonder 650 under Vista MCE (RC2 with latest XP MCE T550/650 drivers which needed to be installed twice) resulted in both the analog and digital components of the TV Wonder 650 being used. This was unexpected.

[denyart]

I can say that with the standby issue the recordings work fine until it tries to use the "Live TV" tuner. So when I tried a dual recording from standby one of them worked and the other gave an error and said the recording could not go because of a lack of signal (I believe). As for the NVidia DualTV. The analog picture quality is worse than a 650, but it is still very useable. I got rid of my DualTV because there is a known but unreported bug with the DualTV and the NForce PCI controller on all of the NForce systems it has been tested on by myself and the guys at PCAlchemy. It appears that the VIXS XCODE-II controller (which does the PCI communication on this tuner) causes some wierd problem on the NForce systems which in my case made the VBox ATSC tuners on my PCI bus inoperable while the DualTV was in use. They haven't released any driver updates that would fix this yet, unless it doesn't exist in Vista. Be very VERY cautious of the DualTV on an NVIdia chipset system.

[Skylark]

Thanks for the informative response, Denyart. I guess I'll just try to live with the inconvenience for a little while and hope that AMD/ATI follows through with some sort of driver update. Unless you know of a PCI dual-tuner solution that has the next-best picture quality and runs stable. Perhaps two 550s? (I like the Cat's Eye 164e, but my PCIe x1 slot is blocked by my VGA cooler).

I am going to produce my own support ticket with AMD/ATI since I don't use an Intel chipset, as soon as that part of their customer care section opens up (still says "closed for holidays").

[Octavean]

Thanks for the informative response, Denyart. I guess I'll just try to live with the inconvenience for a little while and hope that AMD/ATI follows through with some sort of driver update. Unless you know of a PCI dual-tuner solution that has the next-best picture quality and runs stable. Perhaps two 550s? (I like the Cat's Eye 164e, but my PCIe x1 slot is blocked by my VGA cooler).

I am going to produce my own support ticket with AMD/ATI since I don't use an Intel chipset, as soon as that part of their customer care section opens up (still says "closed for holidays").

Skylark, the Vbox Cat’s Eye 164e requires the use of a software “Encoder” for its dual analog solution and as such the picture quality is probably on par with that of the AIW line (Theater 200 chip) or the analog solution on the HDTV Wonder in MCE and the like. CPU utilization is likely to be somewhat higher too.

It should also be noted that the Vbox Cat’s Eye 164e only comes with a time limited trial software “Encoder” but (and this is a big but) the infamous and ubiquitous MCEE pack from the Kram Mod pack works with the 164e.

Naturally dual ATSC doesn’t require the use of “Encoder” software.

Review of Vbox Cat's Eye eDTA-164

Full Review of the Vbox DTA-164e

The 164e isn’t a perfect card by any means but its flaws are few, some of which are being worked on as we speak with beta drivers. Vbox Tech support answers questions quickly and with a live person not a canned response.

[Skylark]

Thanks, Octavean. I only liked the 164e from the aspect of one card, 4 tuners. Anyway, not interested anymore from what you said.

I just put in a support ticket, one more voice from the masses wanting this issue corrected. Hope it helps. In the meantime, I'm considering buying a couple 550s for cheap, until this 650 issue gets resolved. It seems the 550s don't have this issue. And is the PQ better than most?

Also, any tips for the best PQ settings for the 550/650 would be much appreciated. I'm using Nvidia's PureVideo decoder, a 7600 GT, driving a 34" CRT HDTV @1080i.

[Octavean]

Actually, the Vbox Cat’s Eye 164e only has 2 concurrent tuners that are configurable as either “dual analog”, “dual digital” or “analog + digital”. Theoretically, the Vbox Cat’s Eye 164e has 4 tuners (2 actual in concurrent use) in much the same way the TV Wonder 650 has 2 tuners (only one is available at any given time).

BTW, Vbox just completed the 3.271 beta drivers into a finalized version,…..that was fast!!!

Honestly I haven’t even tried the dual analog capabilities of the 164e yet since I already had at least two analog tuners in each of my two main MCE systems. The addition of the 164e added fully concurrent 4x (2x analog + 2x digital) capabilities to these two main MCE 2K5 systems (with a little card reallocation) .

The Picture quality of the Theater 550 Pro solutions are good and very close IMO to that of the TV Wonder 650 but many people may be disappointed with the Theater 550 Pro audio. It might be better to use a 1x Theater 550 Pro + 1x TV Wonder 650 configuration for good dual analog picture quality for those wishing to avoid the dual TV wonder 650 issues in the interim,….rather then buying 2x Theater 550 Pro cards. 1x T550P + 1x TV Wonder 650 doesn’t have the same “Standby” bug as the 2x TV Wonder 650 configuration,….I can attest to that first hand.

Unexpected things might even happen with a 2x Theater 550 Pro + 1x TV Wonder 650 configuration. In Vista RC2 such a configuration automatically enabled both the TV Wonder 650 analog and digital components,…which was very unexpected. This left 1x Theater 550 Pro tuner unused and the system open to the “Erroneous Error” message seen in MCE 2K5 when both the TV Wonder 650 tuners are used simultaneously (I tested it and it did occur). To correct this I exported the individual tuner registry entries in Vista MCE, edited them to enable the tuners for use in Vista MCE and imported them back into the registry with a preferred priority. After that and a reboot the 2x Theater 550 Pro + 1x TV Wonder 650 (digital only) + 1x HDTV Wonder (digital only) Vista RC2 test system worked beautifully and fully concurrently.

If I had another TV Wonder 650 I could test if the 2x TV Wonder 650 issue was present with an additional 2x Theater 550 Pro configuration in Vista RC2 and later Vista Home Premium retail upgrade once my free upgrade ships. However, I don’t think I’ll be buying another 650.

[Skylark]

Thanks for all your hard work and experimentation, Octavean. I'm going to get just one 550 then, and wait for the 650 issue to be fixed. I thought I read somewhere about a hack to get the 550 louder.

In the meantime, if anyone has suggestions for best 550/650 PQ settings in my case (see last post), they would be greatly appreciated.

[denyart]

If you have a "noisy" source you should either leave noise reduction at auto or turn it up until it looks cleaner. If you have a very clean signal (good antenna or good cable) you may get a sharper picture with noise reduction turned down or off. On some feeds the picture can look about as good as DVD. Unfortunately most of the settings other than those are things I can't comment on, and many things can be done with your video card, but those will effect all types of video besides the ATI TV captures, so you may not be happy all the time if you optimize them for this card only. I could answer a more pointed question about settings, but then again Google may be able to do just as well. Good luck!

[Skylark]

I have installed a signal amp/splitter, and have messed with several tuner/decoder/graphics settings, and now get that near-DVD quality on most channels. However, on some channels, there is slight vertical banding or waving, very thin stripes that look like some sort of interference. It happens whether I set noise reduction to "off" or "adaptive" (which, looking at it closely, seems to give me the same quality as "off"). Have you seen that before? Any way to counteract it?

[denyart]

It may (just may) be due to FM interference. You could try an FM trap on your cable/antenna line (preferably before any amps). Otherwise, getting that quality on most channels is doing pretty good. I only have it on a few channels. Most of mine are noisy and grainy. What kind of cable amps have you found that work good for you?

[Seraphic-]

Hi,

Is there a component block available for the 650? (component cables)

Also, has anyone been able to capture at 640x480? It just seems to allow for 720x480