Hot Deal for owners of ATI All In Wonder Cards

[Glendor]

Link to post at Rage3D with instructions on how to get it working.

ATI admits in the post that it works, but they didn't want to advertise it yet...

Okay,

the cat is out of the bag. CAT 5.03 includes support for MCE with AIW cards. We did not publicize it for two reasons. (1) the testing on our side isn't complete so we are not in a position to "officially" support it (2) the issue with the Media Center Receiver service which we plan to resolve in an upcoming release.

Note also that the previous version of the encoder REQUIRED an HT CPU, now I know some people made it work on AMD processors in the past, but the encoder would detect a non-HT CPU and go into a low-CPU, low Quality mode. That is no longer true and the encoder is working in full mode even on AMD processors (which is why ArcCoyote noticed that TV Quality is better).

Yes dual tuners works (so long as the second one has HW encode) and yes an AIW + HDTV Wonder work (but you may need a lot of CPU for that).

As this is still not officialy supported, theres not much more I can say.

Stephen Orr (ATI Guru)

This could be considered a HOT DEAL if you own an AIW card and didn't think it would work with MCE 2005. Knowing this might save you some $$$ since you don't have to replace your AIW card for a Theatrix or TV Wonder Elite now

Glendor...

 

[fbrdphreak]

This is definitely hot for AIW owners, I've never much cared for ATI's AIW & "Wonder" multimedia products due to crappy software & driver support. Looks like its finally starting to go the other way.........

 

[mscdex0]

I have an old AIW 8500 on an XP1700+, would that one be included? or is it meant for newer cards?

 

[Glendor]

According to the post, it needs to be a 9xxx or newer version.

 

[MrMaster]

Originally posted by: Glendor
According to the post, it needs to be a 9xxx or newer version.

damit! I have an 8500 lying about. Guess I still have no use for it.

 

[Glendor]

Back to the top in case you missed it

 

[CQuinn]

Thanks, I had no real reason to upgrade to Cat 5.03 till now.

 

[kevman]

so its useless if you have win XP right ?

 

[cranston]

The advice here is "upgrade at your own risk." The road is littered with the carcasses of computers who haven't survived an upgrade of either the Catalyst drivers or Multimedia Center. ATI's software, on it's most generous day, leaves a lot to be desired. The fact that they don't want to *advertise* it is quite prudent, as they'll be swamped with irate calls about how it doesn't work right.

Now, sure, I used to be in the AEN category of "What-Me Worry?" about upgrading until I had to reformat a hard drive to get MMC (even the old version I was replacing) to work. To be honest, I reinstalled and upgraded and downgraded so many permutations of Catalyst and MMC that I can't really remember exactly what I did. All I know is that it works OK now. Until something comes out in MMC that I *really* must have, I'll stick with MMC 8.9 and whatever the Catalyst drivers I have now. I know some of you out there are more well versed than I am about successfully doing the upgrade, and if you can make it work, goodonya.

Now that I'm done thread crapping, how can I get an 8500 to dump out thru the S-video port exactly what's on the monitor? I can get the card to extend the desktop to an HDTV, but I don't want to extend the desktop -- I want the desktop to be echoed on the HDTV. Is it even possible?

Cheers
Cran

 

[tcsenter]

I've been updating my Catalyst drivers and Control Center within a week of every new release since like Catalyst 3.4 or something. Uninstall > restart > run setup package > restart > presto chango.

I used the standalone Catalyst cleaner/uninstaller a couple times just because I wanted to get rid of any lingering registry entries or files that may have been collecting, not because I needed to.