Originally posted by: bluslice
Originally posted by: Traire
Originally posted by: JeReMY
All you need is the ATI X800XT AIW which has the theater 550 chip on it.
Incorrect. The AIW cards all still use the Theater 200. Only the stand alone cards have the 550.
What do you mean by stand alone cards? isn't the 550 the tv tuner card?
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ATi makes two types of TV tuner cards, Ones called "All in Wonder" and onces called "Tv Wonder".
The All in Wonder cards are just that, they coimbine all sorts of video components into a single card, including the graphics display GPU, TV tuner, analog video in video out, hardware encoding decoding support, etc. Basically it means you can get one card that does it all. Where as...
A TV Wonder card only has the TV tuner device and hardware encoder. You still need a graphics card to run you monitor.
When reffering to the "Theater 550" chip, this is the chip that does the hardware encoding of video input. As of right now, you can only get the 550 chip (which is the best of its type) on a TV Wonder device. The All in Wonder cards still use the much older Theater 200 chip.
Overall, I would reccomend something allong the lines of what Matthias reccomended if your making a SFF HTPC.
In my HTPC, I have a Radeon 9550SE graphics card and a Hauppauge PVR150 TV tuner, though if I were buying today, I would get the something with the 550.