Theater 650 Pro Discussion

[Octavean]

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

Interesting, very interesting indeed.

The following is a general statement not a question directed at any forum member:

It has been speculated by some, myself included, that ATI officially provided the AVIVO Conversion Utility only to X1000 series users because it wouldn’t be economical to support and develop two separate code bases for older legacy ATI video card users. Despite the fact that the AVIVO Conversion Utility in its inception and consequential release didn’t support or utilize any hardware features from the X1000 series it supposedly would in the future.

If, ATI provided universal AVIVO Conversion Utility support for all (or most) ATI video card users, ATI would either have to support two diverging code bases for the utility or stop development and support for one (likely the software only version rather then the X1000 hardware supported version).

ATI could also forgo hardware support with respect to the X1000 series and the AVIVO Conversion Utility altogether and thus standardize on the software only version.

There are obviously other possibilities as well.

I find it very interesting indeed that ATI is offering this utility (for the first time I think) to non-X1000 users even though it was never technically necessary for them to limit it to X1000 series users in the first place.

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!

Right which is why I stated the following:

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

However, I am still not clear on whether or not many PVR applications will work well with the discussed NTSC/ATSC “limitation” of the Theater 650 Pro.

It would be great if you could clear this up Multimedia Mike with a little empirical data.

[dabl]

Mike,

will the HD element of the Theater 650 Pro products write a standard single .TS/.TP file software when recording a single show using the supplied ATI software?

[blakev]

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

Thanks Mike. I shall now wait for someone else to share their test results with a PAL card. After my irritating experience with the 550 Pro, I decided I will never again buy any ATI or partner products until well well after their initial release date. Once bitten, twice shy. On a different note, I take it this PAL/SECAM card will also handle DVB-T, or what the French are calling TNT?

[SHSPVR]

blakev from what I lean from outside source the card should be fully a universal NTSC/PAL all know format and SECAM as well as HDTV and DVB all rolled in to one package.

[Octavean]

Right then,....

When will the Theater 650 Pro be on sale and what areas will have them first (USA, Europe, Japan)?

What is the expected MSRP range?

At such a time, what will be the expected MSRP drop of the older Theater 550 Pro?

What manufactures will be selling Theater 650 Pro cards (will ATI have a model)?

What bundled software will we see with the Theater 650 Pro cards and will ATI's CMC be bundled with "powered by ATI" cards?

What software has the Theater 650 Pro been tested with?

Will all software that runs with the Theater 550 Pro run on the Theater 650 Pro?

Will the ATI Remote Wonder Plus be included with some Theater 650 Pro cards or is there a new ATI remote on the way?

How does the Theater 650 Pro differ from the Theater 550 Pro with respect to DRM in hardware and software?

What Windows logos will the Theater 650 Pro sport (Vista Home Premium, Vista Ultimate, ect)?

Will there be Linux drivers and Apple OS X drivers for the Theater 650 Pro?

Is CMC an entirely new software package or does it license technology (code) from other software manufacturers such as Microsoft or Cyberlink?

Does CMC have MMC code in it?

What decoder does CMC use or is it the same Cyberlink PowerDVD decoder that MMC used?

Will the Theater 650 Pro chip be sold in an external USB 2.0 model or in another interface form/package such as WiFi or RJ-45?

Will there be Theater 650 Pro dual tuner cards and will the Theater 650 Pro be integrated into ATI chipset motherboards?

What is the warranty period for Theater 650 Pro products?

We know that the Theater 650 Pro will work with CMC but will it work with MMC 9.14 and up ( if MMC will still be developed)?

Will CMC be a replacement for MMC in the future and if so how long does MMC have before it is discontinued?

Does or will the Theater 650 Pro have hardware support for the AVIVO Conversion Utility in the same way the X1000 family was supposed to (but currently doesn't)???

Will there be an integrated AVIVO Conversion Utility add-on for MCE 2K5 and Vista MCE users with Theater 650 Pro cards?

What,....

Where,...

When,....

How,....

[jonaslasky]

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.

Snapstream already said Beyond TV will support this card. In fact ATI (for a cnange) is actually communicating with Snaptream, which was not the case with the T 550.

transport streams aren't broken up into smaller files. I think you're misunderstanding that. BeyondTV and other applications DO NOT break up .ts/.tp FILES. While the way they're written on the drive is in fragments.... you DON'T end up with a thousand smaller files. It's still one big file. The latest version of BeyondTV results in less fragmentation than previous ones.... but that has all to do with disk allocation.... not transport streams.

Jonas

[jonaslasky]

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.

I know what you mean.... but to be fair.... newer graphics cards really do a better job at HW DECODING. I noticed a big difference when I upgraded to the new Nvidia 7600... and that's a reasonably priced card now. If you prefer ATI, you'd have to buy an X1600 or above to see any real difference. From what I hear, the X1300 is pretty weak in video decoding. The Nvidia 7600 is great at HD decoding.... better still at regular MPEG-2. Right now I'm watching HD which is fed into my TV on a separate output I'm typing this and working on an illustraion in CorelDraw all at the same time. CPU usage hardly goes over 15%. That's much better than my other computer that has an ATI X850XT.

I liked this bit in that Anandtech review though:

The architecture of the Theater 650 is very similar to the 550, but with a few in changes. The 650 (for NTSC/ATSC countries) includes a Samsung mini-can tuner capable of tuning both analog and digital channels. The "mini-can", from what we understand, is an analog tuner (like the old tin-can tuners that wasted huge amounts of board space) shrunken down to fit in the same area as a silicon tuner. This is a best of both worlds situation where we don't need to worry about the board space of a tin-can, and we shouldn't run into the tuning speed issues we can sometimes see on silicon tuners.

End Quote

Unfortunately, the T650 is just as slow as the T 550.... too bad. It's annoyingly slow.

Jonas

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Just a few more responses:
- dabl, I'm not too familiar with .ts/.tp., but the hardware encoder does MPEG2 for both analog and digital.
- blakev and SHSPVR, just to clarify again, you'll be able to buy a product that does PAL, SECAM, and DVB-T.
- Octavean, you need to relax a little bit. I think you're under too much stress. I'll break those questions down and give you 5 replies at a time just to help you calm down. So here goes, in order of your asking:

When will the Theater 650 Pro be on sale and what areas will have them first (USA, Europe, Japan)?
--> To clarify for people, Theater 650 Pro is a chip that will be used for TV tuner boards, but it itself is not for sale to the public. That being said, TV tuner boards using Theater 650 Pro will be available initially in the USA and Europe. Our partners will announce support for additional regions at a later date.

What is the expected MSRP range?
--> ATI partners set the prices for these products, but the MSRP will be equal or less than HDTV Wonder today.

At such a time, what will be the expected MSRP drop of the older Theater 550 Pro?
--> There is no MSRP drop planned at this time for TV tuner boards with Theater 550 Pro. This would be done entirely at the discretion of our partners and retailers.

What manufactures will be selling Theater 650 Pro cards (will ATI have a model)?
--> A list of partners is available on the Theater 650 Pro webpage.
http://www.ati.com/products/theater650pro/partner.html

What bundled software will we see with the Theater 650 Pro cards and will ATI's CMC be bundled with "powered by ATI" cards?
--> CMC is available as an option to all partners, however partners are ultimately free to bundle with whatever software they desire, or no software. The marjority of partners are expected to ship with CMC.

[blakev]

Thanks Mike. The 550P had an architecture that precluded one card doing the 3 signals, neither with the tuner, neither with s-video/composite input. So the 650P must have have different architecture... Do you have a link to any details on its setup, so I can verify this for myself? Also, let's be clear. The 650P can receive digital braodcast signals, so here the PAL SECAM NTSC isn't relevant. But for analog RF reception, are you saying the 650P will be able to recieve the three analog broadcast standards? Or will the tuner be one of the broadcast standards, with only s-video or composite inputs managing all three? Sorry to be a pedant. Thanks.

[BFever]

Will there be a Theater 650 extender like the following from SageTV (which I believe is a Hauppauge MediaMVP).

http://www.sagetv.com/extender.html

I have had a few Hauppauge products in the past but the picture looked much better on my TV Wonder Elite. Is there a way to create an extender using the TV Wonder Elite or the Theater 650?

Thanks,

BFever

[Multimedia Mike]

Hi,
Some more clarifications:
-blakev, I think you're still not clearly understanding this, so I'll repeat simply. You will be able to get a Theater 650 Pro based product that does PAL, SECAM, and DVBT or you'll be able to get a different Theater 650 Pro based product that does NTSC and ATSC.
-BFever, there are currently no extenders made by ATI. I'm not sure, but maybe there's a way to use some existing ones with ATI products. The one you pointed out seems to work with their software, which works on ATI products, so maybe you can even use that one, but I'd call them up and confirm just in case.

[blakev]

Hi,
Some more clarifications:
-blakev, I think you're still not clearly understanding this, so I'll repeat simply. You will be able to get a Theater 650 Pro based product that does PAL, SECAM, and DVBT or you'll be able to get a different Theater 650 Pro based product that does NTSC and ATSC.

Crystal clear, thanks. Too bad.

[Seraphic-]

Hi,

I know this card is primarily a TV Tuner, however, is it also recommend for video capture from console systems like PlayStation 2? I ask because I make gameplay videos from games, and since i'm going to be using S-Video, i'm looking for a high quality image that is clear, crisp, sharp and with vibrant color. Right now i'm using a Winnov Videum 1000 Plus and i've had it for the past few years. It works great, no dropped frames or audio sync loss. However, it's only rated for 640x480 and I get motion interlacing when I capture both video fields. I'm interested in the 650 Pro since it's rated for 720x480 and looks like it will have a higher quality picture then my current capture card.

So here are my questions.

1. Will the 650 Pro work well with PlayStaion 2 as the video/audio input?

2. Does the 550/650 work with Microsoft's Window Media Resource Kit? It allows video on Windows XP to exceed the 4GB limit on avi files. It does this by removing the avi file extension, once the capture is done you simply need to add .avi to the file. Download it here and let me know please

3. Is the video motion interlaced when the 650 captures both video fields?

4. Can I expect any audio sync loss when capturing video and audio full uncompressed?

5. Will the 650 Pro be vastly superior to my current Videum 1000 Plus? http://winnov.com/?page=products&sub...&sub1=vid1000p

6. What is the expected release date for the 650 Pro?

Thank you

[hrlslcbr]

3. Is the video motion interlaced when the 650 captures both video fields?

If you feed interlaced video to the card, it'll output interlaced video; it won't deinterlace it.
(any good quality card should output interlaced video from an interlaced source; like the PS2).

[Seraphic-]

So televisions have an internal deinterlacer then?

Also, another question I would like to add to my above six.
How does the ATI All-In-Wonder capare to the Theater 650?

Thanks

[BFever]

Multimedia Mike,

Looking to buy possibly a Theater 650 card when available but saw the review over at HTPCNews this a.m. about AverMedia's new card. Why should I buy the Theater 650 card over the AVerMedia AverTV Purity 3D MCE 250?

Linky.
http://www.htpcnews.com/index.php?op...=264&Itemid=26

Thnx,
Bfever