Does nvidia have an answer to ATI's all-in-wonder?

[Zebo]

I know they had some 5750 thingi but anything else..a real 3d accelerator?

 

[Rock Hydra]

No, nVIDIA also had a 5200 based one as well, IIRC. But as far as what you mentione goes....manufacturers might slap a Phillips chip on there for video in, but that's about all.
You also must remember, nVIDIA doesn't make their own boards except for reference. I believe ATI themselves make the AIW card anyway.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Zebo
I know they had some 5750 thingi but anything else..a real 3d accelerator?

Zeebs, if your considering a card like the AIW for video capture, you may want to go with separate cards. Like Hauppauge for instance. This way, when you upgrade your video card down the road, you can still keep your "hauppage" or whatever you choose card.
And you won't have to pay extra for an AIW every time. You'll have to lay the money out once, and thats it.

So if you have an X800xT or something, you'll have the hauppauge card in a PCI slot. Upgrade your X800XT to a 7800GTX and still have your hauppauge card. These are just examples. It could be any graphics board.

Peace.

 

[lifeguard1999]

No they do not. Personally I went with separate cards: ATI TV Tuner; NVidia 6600GT.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: Zebo
I know they had some 5750 thingi but anything else..a real 3d accelerator?

Zeebs, if your considering a card like the AIW for video capture, you may want to go with separate cards. Like Hauppauge for instance. This way, when you upgrade your video card down the road, you can still keep your "hauppage" or whatever you choose card.
And you won't have to pay extra for an AIW every time. You'll have to lay the money out once, and thats it.

So if you have an X800xT or something, you'll have the hauppauge card in a PCI slot. Upgrade your X800XT to a 7800GTX and still have your hauppauge card. These are just examples. It could be any graphics board.

Peace.

Well I'm a toal noob but I want a HTPC to do everything.
- A remote control
- Game
-TV (I have dish network TV)
- replace DVD and CD player
- replace TIVO
- replace preamp maybe.
- edit home movies


One problem with those cards I thought was it has it's own video out to monitor and of course this won't surfice for games at all?

and this software package seems most interesting.

"Do more with the included feature-enhancing Software:
muvee autoProducer ? This DVD Edition of muvee autoProducer is integrated into ATI?s Multimedia Center? as automatic video-production software that enables users to quickly and easily create home music videos in a fraction of the time it would take using traditional video editing products.

Matchware Mediator 7 ? The software program allows for the creative combination of text, pictures, videos and sounds to build stunning presentations in a few minutes plus create web sites with streaming video and Flash® executables.

Serious Magic Visual Communicator ? Visual Communicator features a new video production process that integrates real-time video with real-time 3D graphics. The software program includes an on-screen teleprompter, customizable graphics and titles, real-time transition and green screen effects as well as virtual sets

Pinnacle Studio 9 (ATI Version) ? This newly created full-featured program offers digital video control with additional ATI-based bonuses, and delivers powerful features for consumer video editing. "

 

[Matthias99]

Well, NVIDIA (for a while) was trying to compete with those "Personal Cinema" model cards. They seem to have basically given up on this front, possibly because most people who are serious about video capture want a standalone hardware encoder card.

ATI's got a big edge here, since their Theater 550 chip is actually really damn good in terms of video capture.

 

[n7]

If you want my recommendation, don't buy an AIW.

They are a fantastic value...but only if you never upgrade your video card.

The problem i find is that once you get using one, you'll want to always have a TV tuner on teh PC.

The trouble is, most people like us upgrade video cards like once a year.

That means you have to buy an AIW every single time to keep your TV on your PC.
And well, that simply doesn't work so well.

Get a good PCI or PCI-e TV Tuner card, since you likely won't want a new one for years, unlike with video cards.

My $0.02 based on experience.

Edit: I just realized you won't likely be using the AIW in your main gaming PC; you'll be using this as a secondary PVR PC?
If this is the case, then an AIW might be fine

 

[dug777]

i upgrade my video card when i have to i'd imagine it's a tiny minority of people who upgrade once a year...

but yeah, aiw makes a lot more sense for a HTPC setup i guess.

 

[fliguy84]

aiw is awesome

edit: wrong information

 

[gsellis]

As noted, nVidia ventured and then abandoned the space. And yes, there better capture solutions and Canopus makes the best solution that is IEEE-1394 attached.

But, now with neither ATI nor nVidia supporting AGP on the current chipsets AND nVidia moving away from it (see 6800 line extinctions), I am thinking that the X800 XT AIW might be a best fit for me. I rarely do AV->DV video, but it gives me the options. It has the 550 and some above average encode/decode features with 256MB of memory. Hmmm.

But do remember this, if you have digital cable, most solutions like this are suckage anyway. You have to keep your card on Channel 3/4 and use the cable box to change the channel. The cards cannot handle the digital signal, analog only. That is about any card for TV (I am not aware of an alternate solution, but maybe your cable company offers one?)

 

[Hikari]

Zebo, do you have cable? And if so, who is your cable provider?

 

[Genx87]

Pickup a Hauppage PVR 150 for 100 bucks and forget the AIW. I have a 9600 Pro AIW and the money spent on it was a waste. For 120 bucks cheaper I could have got a PCI card that I could use in new machines, and a card that has better capture quality and better drivers. My PVR 150 is a nice card for the money, my 9600 Pro AIW was bleh.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Pickup a Hauppage PVR 150 for 100 bucks and forget the AIW. I have a 9600 Pro AIW and the money spent on it was a waste. For 120 bucks cheaper I could have got a PCI card that I could use in new machines, and a card that has better capture quality and better drivers. My PVR 150 is a nice card for the money, my 9600 Pro AIW was bleh.

The only problem with the Hauppages, they do not have or have good WMD drivers. That means they usually cannot be used with other capture software except what ships with the card (which is not so hot).

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Zebo
One problem with those cards I thought was it has it's own video out to monitor and of course this won't surfice for games at all?

Nah, the capture cards have various ways to input video to the PC and then you can output that though your videocard the same way you do with games. Some fancy tunners do have video outs of their own, but you probably aren't even interested in those and even if you did get one you could still output though your videocard as well.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: Genx87
Pickup a Hauppage PVR 150 for 100 bucks and forget the AIW. I have a 9600 Pro AIW and the money spent on it was a waste. For 120 bucks cheaper I could have got a PCI card that I could use in new machines, and a card that has better capture quality and better drivers. My PVR 150 is a nice card for the money, my 9600 Pro AIW was bleh.

The only problem with the Hauppages, they do not have or have good WMD drivers. That means they usually cannot be used with other capture software except what ships with the card (which is not so hot).

I don't know about the older models or the lower-end ones, but the PVR-(150/250/350/500) cards work just fine with most third-party software. My HTPC has a pair of PVR-150 cards running with BeyondTV, and the cards work with things like AMCap, so I can't imagine you'd have much trouble with anything that uses WDM.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: Genx87
Pickup a Hauppage PVR 150 for 100 bucks and forget the AIW. I have a 9600 Pro AIW and the money spent on it was a waste. For 120 bucks cheaper I could have got a PCI card that I could use in new machines, and a card that has better capture quality and better drivers. My PVR 150 is a nice card for the money, my 9600 Pro AIW was bleh.

The only problem with the Hauppages, they do not have or have good WMD drivers. That means they usually cannot be used with other capture software except what ships with the card (which is not so hot).

I don't know about the older models or the lower-end ones, but the PVR-(150/250/350/500) cards work just fine with most third-party software. My HTPC has a pair of PVR-150 cards running with BeyondTV, and the cards work with things like AMCap, so I can't imagine you'd have much trouble with anything that uses WDM.

A Co-worker has the HP MCP with the 150 (I think, may be the 250). Pinnacle could not find it (uses WMD) and I think he was having issue with VDub. Did not follow up lately. The best answer we could find was to get another capture device.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: Genx87
Pickup a Hauppage PVR 150 for 100 bucks and forget the AIW. I have a 9600 Pro AIW and the money spent on it was a waste. For 120 bucks cheaper I could have got a PCI card that I could use in new machines, and a card that has better capture quality and better drivers. My PVR 150 is a nice card for the money, my 9600 Pro AIW was bleh.

The only problem with the Hauppages, they do not have or have good WMD drivers. That means they usually cannot be used with other capture software except what ships with the card (which is not so hot).

I used it with meedio and I am sure it works just fine with other PVR applications.

btw ATIs WDM driver sucks ass, it seems like 20% of the time it fails to load or fails in general which requires a reboot.

 

[kpb]

I've your serious about HTPC do not get an AIW card. They work for casual tv viewing but a card like the pvr 150 is much better for a htpc and like others mentioned it's not tied to your video card. Biggest thing for the htpc is that the pvr 150 and simular cards do hardware encoding so you can record and not use much processor power at all. An AIW card does not have that and takes a substantial amount of system resources to record. To do things like record a tv show while watching something prerecorded or a dvd on your HTPC with a 150 is a peice of cake. Trying to do that with an AIW doesn't work well at all unless you've got a really beefy system. I'm not sure if they actually changed it or not but microsoft used to require a card that did hardware encoding for xp media center for that exact reason.

If you like ati's tuner and software bundles buy a ati tv tuner on a seperate card.

As far as the drivers for the pvr 150 goes I assume it has wmd drivers since it works great with windows xp media center and all it's stuff and I assume that uses wmd.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Genx87
btw ATIs WDM driver sucks ass, it seems like 20% of the time it fails to load or fails in general which requires a reboot.

What card? I use a theater550pro card and never had an issue with the driver failing to load.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: Genx87
btw ATIs WDM driver sucks ass, it seems like 20% of the time it fails to load or fails in general which requires a reboot.

What card? I use a theater550pro card and never had an issue with the driver failing to load.

I have to agree with GenX when in regards to the AIWs they have the most painful and failure prone drivers and software installions i have ever dealt with.

Side comment, My father has been using AIW since the 8500 DV and while he has put up with all the problems till now it seriously puts a dent in upgrade plans and he just finally got fed up with driver problems and now has a the PVR 150. He uses another software program he purchased after that for recording I forget which but the ease of use, the seperate card, and the inclusion of a hardware encoder makes it the best option for HTPC or general PC use then just about anything else.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: Matthias99
I don't know about the older models or the lower-end ones, but the PVR-(150/250/350/500) cards work just fine with most third-party software. My HTPC has a pair of PVR-150 cards running with BeyondTV, and the cards work with things like AMCap, so I can't imagine you'd have much trouble with anything that uses WDM.

A Co-worker has the HP MCP with the 150 (I think, may be the 250). Pinnacle could not find it (uses WMD) and I think he was having issue with VDub. Did not follow up lately. The best answer we could find was to get another capture device.

I'm just saying that I have not heard widespread complaints about the drivers for this card, and it works just fine with third-party software for me.

Granted, I've never tried to use Pinnacle with one. Although I thought I used VirtualDub at one point to test that it was working, and it seemed ok...

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Topweasel

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: Genx87
btw ATIs WDM driver sucks ass, it seems like 20% of the time it fails to load or fails in general which requires a reboot.

What card? I use a theater550pro card and never had an issue with the driver failing to load.

I have to agree with GenX when in regards to the AIWs they have the most painful and failure prone drivers and software installions i have ever dealt with.

Side comment, My father has been using AIW since the 8500 DV and while he has put up with all the problems till now it seriously puts a dent in upgrade plans and he just finally got fed up with driver problems and now has a the PVR 150. He uses another software program he purchased after that for recording I forget which but the ease of use, the seperate card, and the inclusion of a hardware encoder makes it the best option for HTPC or general PC use then just about anything else.

Really? I did a lot of digging before getting my current card and considered the PVR-150 but got the impression that the theater550pro cards were better. So what do you think makes the PVR-150 the best HTPC card?

 

[rise]

imo, this tuner is much better than the pvr-150, at least in terms of pic quality.

to be fair, i haven't had alot of time (or need) to mewss around with the software as i have a diamond 550 in my main rig.

but this is a fantastic card. my hope originally was to get a li'l x1300 or x1600 and get the whole avivo thing going but i'll stick with the x300 for now.