ATI A-I-W X800 rumours?

[gsellis]

Has anyone heard any rumours about the X800 version of the All-In-Wonder yet? Maybe even a possible release date?

 

[Falloutboy]

I doubt you'll see one until late july august

 

[NeoV]

I'll never touch an all-in-wonder again, ATI's drivers for multimedia apps SUCK, and aren't even compatible with each new driver release...

get an x800 and then get a Hauppage PVR250 or 350 and thank me later...

 

[gsellis]

NeoV - I may not use an AIW like you do. My other consideration would be an X800 with a Canopus AVDV-100 or a Pinnacle Moviebox DV.

I am waiting to see what hardware decoders/encoders are on the AIW. The X800 has Mpeg2/4. I suspect that MPEG-2 for High Def may wait and be on the 423. Don't know.

 

[Falloutboy]

if your using the AIW for video editing don't even bother its barely adiquest as a TV card. get a quality capture card or a good analog - DV bridge

 

[rbV5]

Personally, I'm looking forward to a new AIW. My experience has been great with my AIW cards, and MMC gets better all the time. Video Capture quality is excellent, and the PVR functions very well. I use my AIW 9700pro in my HTPC/ entertainment PC, and another AIW 7500 in a spare rig.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Lol. If you think an AIW does "very well", WinTV PVR250/350 is like GOD.

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
Lol. If you think an AIW does "very well", WinTV PVR250/350 is like GOD.

I think WinTV PVR250/350 have their place, especially in Linux...however, apples to oranges. AIW cards have a considerable feature advantage over any TV tuner card. I've seen, tested and used a variety of capture cards and tuner cards, I'm pretty comfortable putting my analog captures up against anybody elses.

 

[ForceCalibur]

What FEATURE advantage? THe whole point of capture cards is that they have HUGE feature advantages over AIW series.
BTW, its much cheaper to just buy a pvr250 + radeon 9800 pro than a AIW 9800 PRo.

 

[rbV5]

What FEATURE advantage?

3D performance for starters.

THe whole point of capture cards is that they have HUGE feature advantages over AIW series.

Which huge advantages would that be beyond the ability to keep the tuner and replace the graphics card.

BTW, its much cheaper to just buy a pvr250 + radeon 9800 pro than a AIW 9800 PRo.

There was $40 difference when I bought mine, so it all depends on your timing. Additionally, that combination does not equal an AIW. A pvr250 without being bundled with decent software like Sage or BTV is pretty limited as well. I don't disagree that those cards have a place in the market.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Hardware Decoding, software support, FFDshow, better drivers, better quality, use of 3'rd party codecs, tons more. Being able to watch and record TV shows with no CPU usage. (AKA, being able to do something else, actually Play games while recording a Show?!?!?)

Having the AIW just means you can only do one thing at a time without sacrificing performance.

NOt saying the AIW is bad for casual watching/recording, its fine. If you want to really control what your recording, how your recording, when your recording w/ TV guides and stuff, Hauppage definately is better.

Atleast, right now. Radeon 9800 Pro = 200. WINTV250(mce) = 100.

Btw, there are free programs out there that take a bit of tinkering with but work just as well as Sage and Beyond.

 

[rbV5]

Hardware Decoding

Hardware dcoding isn't available on PVR250 at all, and hardware decoding is only available on PVR350 using s-video or composite output.

software support, FFDshow, better drivers, better quality, use of 3'rd party codecs, tons more

Those are all available using an AIW.

Being able to watch and record TV shows with no CPU usage. (AKA, being able to do something else, actually Play games while recording a Show?!?!?)

There is a reason that AIW was qualified as the only single card MCE solution. Optimized software encoding using "encode", the same goes for the Window environment. Granted PVR 250/350 has low cpu use when you use the hardware accelerated codecs, but you can capture and perform other tasks even while gaming with AIW the CPU usage is dependant on the rig and AIW model, but MPEG codecs are hardware assisted on the R3xx mdels going forward.

NOt saying the AIW is bad for casual watching/recording, its fine. If you want to really control what your recording, how your recording, when your recording w/ TV guides and stuff, Hauppage definately is better.

Actually ATI PVR is suprisingly powerful. Has extensive codec support and configurability, hardware filtering using R3xx+, an EPG w\ scheduler. It has a nice library applet w/ direct burn to DVD with AIW 96xx.on and on if anything, Hauppage is severely lacking in the software department out of the box compared to ATI. MCE, BTV and Sage are what makes it a powerful hardware.

Atleast, right now. Radeon 9800 Pro = 200. WINTV250(mce) = 100.

AIW 9700 pro $239 shipped Newegg aint bad either.

Btw, there are free programs out there that take a bit of tinkering with but work just as well as Sage and Beyond.

And other than Sage and MCE on a consumer level, they all pretty much support AIW if they are Direct Show.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Sorry, my bad, I meant hardware encoding. THe point was that it allowed better recording quality, with like no CPU usage.

Ofcourse, the other aspect of AIW is that you cannot upgrade the card without losing your PVR. A waste of money basically if you ever intend to upgrade.

 

[rbV5]

Sorry, my bad, I meant hardware encoding. THe point was that it allowed better recording quality, with like no CPU usage.

It allows for encoding without taxing the CPU when using the supported codecs, it doesn't allow for better quality. In fact I would say the AIW cards using the Theater 200 chips 12bit ADC's and hardware filtering support have better quality captures, especially with a poorer signal.

Ofcourse, the other aspect of AIW is that you cannot upgrade the card without losing your PVR. A waste of money basically if you ever intend to upgrade

Unless you factor in the vast majority of users that don't even game with their PC. I've never had any trouble getting rid of my used AIW cards for a fair price. You can also use the same cables that came with my original AIW Radeon with almost every AIW model including AIW 9800 (the exceptions are 8500dv and AIW 96xx models) saving you money if you want to grab a refurb. The FM remotes are great and have plugin support as well. Not such a waste really.

 

[SilverTrine]

You dont like AIW Force thats fine, now shut up about it plenty of people like theirs.

 

[rbV5]

Another interesting consideration is that all the X800pro cards I've seen for sale are bundled with the YPbPr cable that used to be exclusive to AIW. Couple that with the newly announced TV Wonder USB 2.0, and you might finally be close to having a combination with the good features of AIW, and the flexability of a seperate graphic card. What makes the TV Wonder USB 2.0 interesting is it will be the first TV Wonder card that shares the same VIVO chip (Theater 200) as the AIW cards. That means, you'll be able to use the far superior WDM drivers and the vastly superior MMC support. It will also be a standalone unit, so you could use it for anything with USB 2.0 support as well (notebook!, SFF HTPC) There are some interesting things coming down the pipe.

 

[gsellis]

Thanks rbV5. I have a 7500AIW in the machine I do analog capture in. The only real issue I had was tape related, lossing sync across a dropout. I only use it a few times a year to generate AVIs for import into my primary NLE. I usually use Studio or TMPGENC as both recognize the WDM capture component. Shoot, was able to take analog straight to DV2 the first time I tried it 2 years ago. That was cool.

I figure a X800 AIW may hedge my bet for HDV when the next version of Liquid Edition comes out. But you never know. The next Pinnacle/ATI card may be PCI-e only as that is how they have demoed it to date. Time will tell. I need to get an HDV camera first

 

[rbV5]

Accelerated WMV HD decoding, and even more, hardware encoding would be my feature request more than anything. It takes a tremendous amount of time to encode captured transport streams to a DVD friendly WMV HD format, and it takes a tremendous amount of storage to store the native transport streams.. they're not portable. One or the other has to give.

 

[gsellis]

RE WMV-HD. Yes, part of the reason I built a dually too.