It's official... I want one! ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV

[Karsten]

If you have not seen it... go here and watch the presentation. Especialy part two is very interesting.
I think they just sold me on it!



Video presentation

 

[artemedes]

Thanks for the link!

I think I will get one of these two (after i see a review or two). Only thing that disappoints me is the clock speeds. 230/190.

I was hoping it to be at least the same as the LE model.

Still looks like a kickarse card though.

 

[MANKOU]

Why you people don' t get a good video card and a TV tuner instead of 2 in one?

 

[Maetryx]

Only takes up one slot, for one thing. Plus ATI makes good products bundled with good software. I'm dying for one of these new AIWs. I've got the Radeon AIW and it's great.

 

[Karsten]

Having all that functionality in one easy to acces card... plus being able to play the games and then even capture my shows directly to the hd. What other card was / is able to do that?

 

[Apex]

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised at the core/mem speeds on the 8500dv. I knew it would be a drop, but I didn't know it would plunge quite that low. Anyone else surprised?

 

[Rand]

<< . What other card was / is able to do that? >>



The G450 eTV and nVidia Personal Cinema are pretty feature packed. I wouldnt say either quite provide the level of features in most areas that ATi's 8500DV has though.
G450 eTV can't handle gaming though, and the Personal Cinema has incredibly poor drivers and seems to have many compatibility issues etc.

 

[Finality]

Why not spend extra $$$$ on a proper DVI card? It seems these cards get outdated every 6 months. Its like wasting money on a new motherboard everytime you upgrade your processor.

 

[Smbu]

"Plus ATI makes good products bundled with good software. I'm dying for one of these new AIWs. I've got the Radeon AIW and it's great."

You could always just buy something like the ATI TV Wonder and say a Radeon 8500 to get the same functionality.
I'd rather have my video card and my Tv tuner separate. I used to have an ATI AIW Radeon and when I wanted to upgrade that, well I had to get rid of my tv tuner/capture stuff too. Now I am using a WinTV USB with my GF3 Ti500(also used it with my GF2 Pro) and I will most likely still be using my Wintv usb when I upgrade to the NV25, or the next generation Radeon card, depending on which is better.
Another plus is it also works great with my laptop.

 

[hcarlson]

I still love my ATI Radeon 64 meg w/ VIVO....can watch TV through Video In and it's not that horrible for gaming, just not that great.

 

[MrGrim]

I wish you luck.

 

[StormRider]

<< Honestly, I'm a bit surprised at the core/mem speeds on the 8500dv. I knew it would be a drop, but I didn't know it would plunge quite that low. Anyone else surprised?
>>



I always thought the AIW series should be the highest clocked models because they're the most expensive.

 

[Soccerman]

You could always just buy something like the ATI TV Wonder and say a Radeon 8500 to get the same functionality.

the problem with this is that the TV wonder has some limited functionality compared to the AIW series cards.. I don't remember exactly what is limited, but I think one limit was resolution..

also, driver and software updates for the TV wonder isn't nearly as often AFAIK as the video cards..

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

Newegg shows Dec. 5th

 

[vitocorleone]

If you don't NEED a new video card or NEED anything on the 8500DV, I think it would be somewhat of a bad idea to buy one rather than wait 6 - 9 months for the next generation card that will have the rage theater 2 chip on it. But, if you do need one, and/or have money to burn, then it certainly does look like a sweet all-in-one(der) card.

 

[oLLie]

vitocorleone,

I did a google for "Rage Theater 2" "Rage Theatre 2" "Rage Theater II" and "Rage Theatre II" and all I found were links to stuff about the Rage Theater (Theatre?). How do you know ATi is making a next-gen Rage Theater (Theatre?) chip? I was suprised enough when I heard the 8500dv was still based on the same chip as the past 2 (or 3?) AIW cards.


Whew, look at all those parens.

 

[artemedes]

I am interested in buying the 8500 DV because I am in need of a new video card and I would very much like the all the features built
into the 8500DV. If I were to buy an 8500 OEM and a seperate tv tuner card I still wouldn't have all the features of the 8500 DV and
don't think I would save that much money. Plus I will get easy to use mpeg2 decoding with one step that is ready to be dropped
onto a SVCD, and a really cool radia frequency remote. I plan on recording my favorite shows and convert the ones I want to keep
to SVCD or regular VCD. If the videos linked above are any indication, this appears to be a very good and easy approach.

I agree, that for people that don't need a new card they might as well save money and get a seperate card. But for me, and my needs,
the 8500DV seems to fit the bill.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

I have a WinTV Tuner card. Is there any advantage to getting the 8500DV over say just a regular 8500, if I keep the separate tuner card? One thing that I like to do but that is killing my current rig is to use SnapStream PVS software to record TV shows. Two things I don't like about it: it records in wma format, not mpeg1 or 2, and I really can't use my system for anything else.

Since I record more than gaming, and am looking for a new video card, and have the cash, is this the card for me? How about a hardware MPEG encoder?

 

[clstrfbc]

mooseAndSquirrel
AIW 8500DV writes directly to mpeg2, which means high quality videos for playback or burning. They said the storage rate was 7hrs to 10Gb of hard drive spaceor .7:1 . Not bad i guess, but not great. The replay tv gets a 2:1 rate of hrs/Gb. I don't know what format it uses though.

Somewhere in the video they said the chip does decoding, and your cpu does encoding.
If I had money to burn I'd get one. Mostly because I have been looking at getting a DVR/PVR and those go for about 200 to 600 anyway.
So why not upgrade the video card too ....

 

[LightningJay]

I was also hoping that the AIW R200 would have the RAge theater 2 but a search I performed a couple of moths ago and a couple of questions on some forums made it clear to me that the supposedly MPEG4-decoding capable Theater2 would be a next gen product. I would have loved to see MPEG2 encoding in the hardware but for now this is only available (afaik) on the PVR cards of Vidac and Hauppage, at a cost of 250$ dollars where I live. I don't know about the cards of Pinnacle. They however are still equiped with analog TV-tuners, whereas this AIW has a tuner-on-a chip, wich turns out to be of the same series as those ones on the late VoodooTV 100 and 200. According to a press-release at micro tune it says their MT2032 will be used. According to the specs of the chip it is able to receive digital as well as analog TV. I was wondering, as I don't know much about the digital TV standards wether the AIW would be able to receive future digital TV broadcasts over the ether in Europe? It would be a rather future proof solution if so. What is the difference with the onboard HDTV-decoder (what is the function of the HDTV-decoder?).

 

[mikeford]

As far as the tv/video stuff goes, what the difference between the AIW Radeon and the 8500DV?

What I have heard is that its not changed that much, so I took advantage of the price drops and grabbed the older AGP AIW Radeon for $97 AR. In fact I am thinking about picking up one of the PCI cards too, and setting up a couple older PCs (better than 500 mhz though) pretty much for VCR duty timeshifting.