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ATi's All In Wonder Radeon 7500
FlippedBit writes "ATi has released a very affordable All In Wonder product based on their Radeon 7500 chip. For a mere $200 smackers you can get decent 3D graphics, TV Tuner, TiVO functions, and a remote that will work from another room with no line of sight."
and it's not with the hardware but the software that gives you the TiVo like operation...
it doesn't work without a massive fight under windows 2000. it is the same software suite that comes with the TV wonder from ATI and their multimedoa center just sucks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
and an IR Remote that will work from another room with no line of sight.
Great! I hate having to have line of sight when I'm trying to watch some TV.
So does ATI release Free drivers unlike the NVIDIA hell I've been stuck with the last 2 years?
I wish it were easier to turn down hardware on the same issues we can turn down software, but it seems to be a sellers' market.
Who needs 300 fps? The eye can only see 50 fps.
---
Yours sincerely
The "Who needs 300 fps? The eye can only see 50 fps." troll
what if i've only got 200 smuckers?
Obviously, if the remote works outside of line-of-sight, it's not IR. In fact it's a radio remote.
[quote]IR Remote that will work from another room with no line of sight[/quote]
That sounds like quite a feat... I wonder if they mean RF.
The remote uses (RF) Radio Frequency, not IR (InfraRed). IR has to have line of sight. That's how it can go through walls.
I have an old Dish Network receiver that uses an RF remote. It's great if you're listening to the CD channels piped through a home speaker system, and you want to change the channel blind (like you have the channel order memorized) but besides that it's worthless because you can never buy a replacement remote or integrate with a decent home theater controller. Of course there's a guy on the net selling an IR "upgrade" kit.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I was just telling a customer that I didn't know of any easy way (read: my grandma can do it way) to turn his PC into a TiVo-like device. Looks like this might be it -- shall have to do some more research when I get to work.
On the other hand, while I think that the price is great for what you get on this card, we've sold AIW cards for less than that before, so I'm not sure I'd mark it as "affordable" for someone who wanted just a "basic" AIW card. Still, a damn cool looking card.
What about Linux support for 3D and video ? ;) )
Does it provide an OpenGL and Video4Linux interface in Linux ? Otherwise I'm not interested (as if that matters
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Slashdot still won't post any PowerVR related articles that I write.
I have been using this AIW Radeon as well as the old AIW Radeon for a long time now and it is no where near the TIVO status. Why? I hate to say it / point out the obvious -- ATI's Drivers and Software suck. They are the major suck. Until 7.6 came out, when you fast forwarded you had no idea how many seconds / frames you skipped and it was never consistant. Also, pausing (the greatest TIVO feature imho) often causes crashes, as does pausing then playing then FF over comercials or slow parts. (This comes on a win98, win2k, and winxp boxes all that w/o TV card get months of up time, and the crashes are clearly TV card related). Their guide software, although free, is worth what you paid for it. Its total poo - and it takes forever to upload it.
Also, recording on your PC from VCR (home movies anyone?) can be a real bitch if you dont read the rage3d faqs.
The controls are also still very icky. The program scheduling and recording leaves much to be desired (if its going, thats all you get from your TV card - no way to record one show and watch another -- even if your machine has the horse power, this card does not). Then, to find out what show you have scheduled and whatnot, you have to find the tab in the options and thats a shitty interface to begin with.
Also, when you install the MMC7.x which is required to give you the drivers for TV overlay and the program to watch TV, you get all kinds of other shit and program association take over (you can say not to install the shit but then when you play back recorded shows, they dont show right a lot of times w/o the ATI File Player)
Simply said - the card may be good - but the software leaves much to be desired - and it is far FAR from Tivo quality atm
(Please in the replies, if you know of good alternative software let me know - same if you know how to more or less make something of a decent tivo clone using an AIW + Linux)
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Now I can watch tv and use my computer
from my bathroom.
(sorry, i won't put my computer in the bathroom)
In other news, slashdot's new "ad stories" have begun today featuring an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 7500 Video Card produced by ATI. As always, no actual fact checking was done to insure that this payed advertisement was actually factual and not missleading.
First of all, it has been released for over a month... mine arrived in late February... Unlike a previous poster, I have had little setup issues with Windows 2000, although it is a tad on the quirky side. (A useful tip is to do a google search for "beta radeon drivers," where you can get the latest release of ATI's multimedia center that is considerably less buggy than the one that it ships with... The only issue that I have had with this card is that my "non-line of sight" remote only seems to work within about 5 feet from the receiver... (ATI's tech support has been no help with this issue either)....
... this seems just like a very plain article just to get hot hardware some hits. A while back anandtech did a GOOD tv card round up (its outdated so I wont link it but you can find it in the anandtech.com archives). That was what this article was not. Also, the whole IR RF thing that everyone has pointed out ...
and it works really good (the remote is really well designed) with one or two exceptions that I was pretty much ready for: Using a TV as your monitor sucks. The text is unreadable, even set to a larger size. The TV picture in a window looks really clear on the TV and monitor. However, if you maximize the tv picture (when using the TV as your monitor), the resolution goes to shit and the TV picture isn't that clear. The Tivo software works good but the TV guide program doesn't seem to work with DirecTV but I haven't really tried hard yet. It was really easy to install on XP but under 98 (don't ask) it had serious issues which were probably related to the machine I was using.
How the hell does an infra red (which is light, remember) remote work from another room (eg, walls in the way) without any line of sight? The only way you can do that is if you have some sort of IR -> RF -> IR repeater somewhere inbetween, or use a RF remote.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
This thing came out last year.
They're really nice, though. I use mine to catalog the Simpsons and The Rockford Files on VCD. It does seem to have a problem with the pitch on the audio when recording to certain formats (like the ones I want to use).
The fact that I bought one explains their anonymity. I'm always one of like 18 people who buy my particular brand(s) of hardware, making support sketchy.
I already tested many graphic cards available on the market. I found these boards (Radeons) somewhat easier to install but I dont know why it had some issues with some games I tested under windows. I never get the chance to test them under linux cause my linux box is already equiped with a GeForce mx400 and a voodoo 3 3000.
I tested a Radeon (but i cant remember the model anymore) board on a G4 Cube and it worked alright however gaming perfomance was not that high, I prefered the GeForce on that particular case.
Lets hope this brand new Radeon had some of it issues solved, Ill get a list of them when I get home and post it here so we can all discuss it.
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
Can't do IR w/o line of sight. I looked at the article and its RF which will work anywhere with a given range.
NVidia's is like a bratty girlfriend:
When they are good, they are very very good.
When they are bad, they are rotten.
I've had the experience with NVIDIA drivers working perfect on one machine, and on another it randomly crashes all the time.
I just bought an ati7000 for building an audio machine (no emphasis on graphics) and the 3d accell worked alsmo outta the box on a debian "testing" install (I had to switch it so the agpart module was loaded BEFORE the radeon module).
I'm tired of reading about the people that have it work "perfectly" at the expense of those that don't. I've had it both ways, and I like the ATI way better.
(however the ATI drivers need to be labeled better, they refer to things like radeon VE, while consumers just know radeon 7000,7500,8500)
Compaq presario 8000 now come with Radeon 8500 All-in-wonder 128MB as an option. I have been contemplating getting one for some time. Can anyone tell me if it worth going for it. I mean what does the 8500 add which the 7500 doesn't have.
When I looked at the ATI website. They seem a new card called 8500DV with 64 MB DDR. What is the extra DV? Is different from plain 8500.
I will probably not be getting a new machine for the next several years so I want to get the latest and the greatest now.
Also I read somewhere that ATI would release the next generation of Radeon chip called R300 which is supposed to be GeForce4 beater. It would to be released it in August. Should I wait for it to be released ?
What I would like to find out is how well it does MPEG capture, meaning how fast a processor, how much memory, and how much disk do I need to convert 22 minutes of analog to MPEG. Does it encode on the card, or in software?
And does thier card work with other capture software, or are you stuck with what they provide?
One of the things that annoyed me about this card is it doesn't do duel-head. The Xtasy Everything seems to be a comparable device, but it also does dual head. But you end up with an IR remote & the encoding is done in software.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
I have a Radeon All-in-one, and while I agree that the ATI software is not strong, I simply use ShowShifter for the TV stuff.
It is a great piece of software-- works really well on a regular TV as well.. combined with a logitech wireless keyboard and a B & O TV, and I'm a happy tv watcher.
It even recompresses your recordings in the background so you can do archiving of your sheduled shows..
You also can't use this with a cable box as it, unlike the TIVO, has no way to change the channel on the cable box itself.
Also, the "keyword search" functionality where, say, you want to search on shows that have the word "Robotics" in the title and description also doesn't work. It does make a nice little recorder to record shows from your TIVO to VCD and if you don't have a cable box you actually get all your cable channels which helps.
Heil Sig! -Rob
This glowing review brought to you by....ATI
1. Not all channels seem to be supported by the Guide+ guide... (Oxygen, WB, and a few others in my area) (Note that you can still record shows on these channels, but you have to program it as you would a traditional VCR) 2. Recording quality is great, but when watching TV in "TV On Demand Mode" (where you can pause, fast forward, rewind, etc..) the quality card is less than perfect at lip-synch'ing... and this can be quite annoying. 3. You don't want to have your computer be doing much else while recording shows... (The card has often decided it was in my best interest to *not* record certain shows that I had earmarked...) 4. This card is designed to not record anything that has been protected with macrovision... (Some forum users elsewhere have reported success in bypassing this, though) All in all, I am very happy with this card, as I use it primarily to record shows when I'm not around for archival purposes. If you want perfection and true TV on Demand, I'd suggest TIVO instead...
The Radeon 8500 is leaps and bounds better than the 7500, even in AiW form. THe 7500 is actually based on the Old radeon chip, but with a 0.15 micron build process that allows higher clock speeds. As for the DV, i assumed that the DV was the way that they distinguished the standard 8500 from the AiW. I.E, I thought that the all-in-wonder WAS the DV. If you are looking for performance Difference between the 8500 AiW and the 7500 AiW, I have to say that the difference is quite large. The 8500 AiW is better than the geforce 3 series in my opinion, and with all the features, a perfect all round card :).
If anyone can indeed clarify the DV thingy, I also would like to be put right...
tivo clone... that's kinda easy/hard
a bt878 capture card - elcheapo is best.
a hollywood+ mpeg playback card.. dirt cheap on ebay... DO NOT PAY the $79.95 retail for these.. only complete idiots are trying to sell them for more than $45.00 I get the mall the time for $29.00 on ebay.
a old P-II machine and nuppelvideo for recording and mplayer for playback.
Add a web-based scheduler and you are done.. no you dont get pause tv, or the other fluff but you do get it recording your shows... showtime every friday at 1045pm est for 1 hour.. is not difficult to program
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm reasonably sure that the DV option includes firewire ports.
This story sounds like one of those Slashvertisements (tm) that was foretold on April Fools Day! Oh, no! Now Linus is going to drop the kernel development and AOL is going to buy up people's blogs!
Remember, Drink Coca-Cola!
As if it wasn't bad enough that we get advertisements in the middle of our articles ... now we get advertisements that actually ARE the articles. Way to go ... News for Nerds ... Stuff that Matters?
Well, the RF spectrum is definitely a longer wavelength than the visible spectrum, so in the very loosest definition of InfraRed meaning "below the red", I guess you could say that the remote *is* IR :-) :-) :-) :-) {lotsa smilies}
The mpeg-2 it produces is horrible too. It works fine with it's own video player, but using any other codec and it's "squashed" so I only record in VCD quality (mpeg-1). Even that is horrible. If I bring it into a video editing program like Cyberlink's PowerDirector, the audio and video slowly get out of sync. From what I can tell by doing google searches, it's because Hauappauge encodes some sort of proprietary sync markers into their a/v streams and other vendor mpeg editing tools don't grok it.
They did finally release an mpeg editing tool that just allows "cuts only" to edit out commercials, but it then re-encodes the entire file. I bought PowerDirector mainly because it doesn't re-encode the entire file and now it's all but useless to me.
So, in summary, their competitor isn't much better, if at all. The A/V capture market sucks it seems..
Wake up ATI and smell the Aqua!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I used to have an all-in-wonder ATI card. Now I have a geforce and a separate winTV card. Here's my problem with it: When it's time to upgrade your 3d, you have to upgrade the whole thing. I do a fair amount of gaming, mostly sports and action, and while my old Geforce 2mx is great, I'm sure in a year or two I'll want to upgrade. By having the card separate, I don't have to worry. There is software (shapeshifter, below) that works as a "tivo like" thing.
That said, I'm thinking of building a dedicated "media server" box for my stereo. I have the old AIW pro laying around to use as a card, get a wireless keyboard and mouse and network it. Anyone else done this and have any advice (note: Don't bother with Linux advice. I'll run Win2k.)
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I've got the Radeon 7500 plain, not the A-I-W version. It only cost me $80 (oem). It absolutely sucks, it's slow as hell, the drivers are the buggiest I've ever seen and the video quality absolutely stinks.
;-) Seriously, you can't beat the bang-for-the-buck these cards give.
I think everybody should not buy them so they sit on the store shelves so long that they have to practically give them all away just to get rid of them. Then when that happens, I can go and get a bunch more of them really cheap
You're right, I have the AIW 8500 DV and it does come with firewire. You should note that although ATI doesn't state it in any of their advertising, their drivers only support DirectShow and not Video For Windows. This might be an issue for those of you looking to use this card for video conferencing.
yea i stole your sig- whats the big deal, it sucked anyway.
is a dollar smacker?
I'm running W2K SP2 and already have a Matrox G550 - I want something "like" Tivo, it doesn't have to have ALL of the features, but high quality video is a must(no 320x240 capture). Obviously it has to be PCI rather than AGP - I only know of an older ATI card that has some of these features. Any Ideas?
What good is a subscription model to avoid ads when they come back to haunt you as "news"?
"Aw, quitcherbitchin' and just ask."
So, I haven't been able to find out anywhere, does this card handle PAL to NTSC transfers (like a region 2 PAL disk to an NTSC TV), or would a body need more hardware than this?
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
What OS versions are supported by this thing? I recently ordered the 8500 AIW, and only when I opened the box found out it won't work with Windows earlier than ME, so my 98 box is not suitable. (stupid web store leaving that detail out of their description) Eh, I don't want ME or XP... I know, you guys here advocate Linux, and I'm trying to get RH 7.2 running, but Windows runs my games, CAD/EDA software, and some things that I really can't do with Linux yet. Any chance Lindows would handle the included PVR software with these ATI cards??
ATI cards are really cool, I personnally have a All-In-Wonder-128, and it rocks.... except when I get blue screens.
And that's the problem:
- video capture : random crashes when using the MPEG driver.
- ATI Tuner : bogus, with cool green bars on the top of the screen.
- ATI DVD Player : cool, except the system freeze after 30 minutes
- 2D drivers: excellent, but also sometimes freeze the system when using window scrolling
ATI hardware is great - but they should have hired better driver developpers, too.
ATI cards are actually quite excellent. They are fast, powerful, and have MUCH better 2d acceleration (like for scrolling in PDFs et etc) than nVidia cards.
ATi Drivers sucks ass though. This is fairly common knowledge. Mac drivers for ATi cards are also crap, so its not like ATi has a problem with windows. And though I don't use linux, I am sure ATi doesn't exactly shine in that category either.
After my last card purchase from ATi they have only gone downhill in terms of software support. While nVidia manages to pull power out of even limited chipsets with their decent drivers, ATi seems to assume consumers want to code their own drivers. By hand. And without any info from ATi.
Oh, and because of the sheer brilliance of ATi execs, the decision was made to keep the framework of the cards "closed" --i.e. open source people are not going to get even a little hint on how to write drivers. So even the independent developer community can do nothing to remedy the situation (and I, for one, would be willing to pay for decent video drivers).
Its really sad when good hardware gets handcuffed, beaten to a fine pulp, and smeared over a nearby wall, resulting in a useless POS (also see modern art and microsoft), and all because of bad software--stuff thats CHEAPER to develop and distribute than hardware!
I will never buy an ATi card again, or at least until decent drivers actually are available for download, and are favorably reviewed, and not just "promised" as they are now.
Hi all!
I have an ATI TV Capture Card, and I was wondering if a Linux program exists to watch TV from that card. I don't need the GuidePlus+ software and recording capabilities, just a plain TV software.
Cheers,
Drakkar
Screw the Tivo-like functions - I have a Real Tivo and the Tivo software is what makes it good.
What I like about the ATI is that it has fast OpenGL and TV tuner support under Linux with free software drivers! Stable, fast, I have the code and I can tweak it.
That's what motivates me to buy one.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I can't believe /. decided to post this story - do I smell payola???
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
While the list you give you TV recording and playback, it's nowhere even vaguely close to TiVo-like.
Read what he (and others used to TiVo) asked for, and you'll note you didn't answer the question.
First off, the hardware solution given is very, very low quality. The recording is MPEG-1 IIRC, and low-bitrate at that. The playback is fixed resolution (so if you have a big-screen HD-ready TV, you've screwed yourself -- flipside is that TiVo is pure NTSC as well, so it doesn't exactly do wonders for bigscreen HD-ready either).
Second, the real contention is not the hardware, but the software. Pausing live TV is not an optional feature. 2+ weeks of guide data is not an option. Automagic recording of a show instead of punching in day/time data is not an option.
Ok, so maybe those features ARE an option to you or to others who haven't used TiVo, but it merely means that your solution is behind the times. And yes, all of these things are harder than they seem. And yet, people whine about having to pay TiVo for exactly this kind of thing.
All that said, your solution does work, and is a low-budget alternative to the AIW card, TiVo, Replay, etc. It does lack some features, but what can you expect for something that is half the cost (or less)? I just wanted to note that you didn't actually answer the question being asked.
The card itself requires XFree86 4.2+ and or the current drivers from the GATEOS project at http://gatos.sourceforge.net
There's reported problems with some of the functions like capture working, and I still don't have TV working at all.
It's a nice card in theory, but I'd be a bit wary before jumping out and buying one.
- Serge Wroclawski
I've had my AIW 7500 since January thanks to newegg.com, and its a nice piece of kit. The drivers are piss poor though. It comes with a dongle for attaching items like tvs etc and an output dongle. Also, it comes with a schweet remote. The main gripe I have with this thing is the drivers. For the life of me, I could not get it to work right for windows 98 or 2000 at first. When I installed the 2k drivers, at first it would drop frames left and right whenver I tried to record TV shows. After reinstalling the software, it worked a treat and now my Athlon 1600XP no longer drops frames. As for win98, they're terribly unstable and buggy. At first, I coudln't get the remote to work, the Tv capture was broken and the DVD didn't play. After reinstalling several times with newer drivers, the DVD support worked and TV was improved, but whenever I would timeshift, the lip sync would be off. Then I re-graded to direct X 8.1 and reinstalled the drivers again, and now everythign works. However, if I load a DVD and it loads up that flash-based piece of crap interactual player, it breaks the ATI DVD player and I get no remote when I want to watch a movie.
Once again, nice piece of kit with terrible drivers. ATI should out source their driver development.
BTW for all those who encounter Macrovision problems with the card, search for a file called ATITV032.dll. This file controls all of the Macrovision functions on the card. Delete or rename it, and the card no longer will recognise macrovision. I've been able to record several tapes with it removed.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
very affordable All In Wonder product .... For a mere $200 smackers
Am I the only one that thinks $200 is a lot of money still?
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I don't want to upgrade my OS from Win98SE so I am 'stuck' with going to a 7500. The 8500 looks nice but I have so much legacy hardware that I would lose all of it just to gain better video.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
4. This card is designed to not record anything that has been protected with macrovision...
Bart: Wow, you can do anything out here!
Homer: That's right. See that ship over there? [points to a ship with a large satellite dish on it] They're re-broadcasting Major League Baseball with implied oral consent, not express written consent -- or so the legend goes.
- Life is what keeps you occupied while you are waiting to die
I have this card. I bought it so that I could use one card to play 3D games and do video capture. Well I can play games just fine, except for commercial version of tuxracer that just doesn't want to start, however I have not been able to do video capture. Others on the Gatos mailing list have also been having similar problems. The good old Hauppage WinTV cards work really well for TV capture and even have Video4Linux2 drivers.
Being the NVidiot that I am, I bought the Visiontek Xtasy Everything Nvidia Personal Cinema instead of the AIW, Primarialy because of the Never ending Driver Issues ATI seems to have.
So far I haven't had any hardware problems with it. It has great video and sound, and since it's an external box, upgrading to a newer card shouldn't be a problem as long as the new card has vivo.
The Only problem that I have with it is the WinDVR software can't be upgraded without messing up the remote control buttons, but the version that came with the card works fine with no problems.
another thing is that it's a GeForce2 MX400, but that still fast enough for most games out there, and it's faster than an 7500.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
(well, to be fair, i think it's their drivers that suck, not their app software)
Does it run under WINE?
I was looking at the remote on the all in wonder and it looks exactially like the remote for the x10. I have that and it is very cool to have. but I would never buy the all in wonder for just tv.
look my sig changes!!! nrrt mf oci jdabi.o!!! z..a ir kot gh-ntbk{{{
If you're just using Linux, you'll need to upgrade to XFree86 4.2 just to get the card working. The Linux drivers are more stable, at least. I've had two crashes and occasional texture corruption (with a few pixels of rainbow colors!?) while playing Wolfenstein, but no problems in 2D or with OpenGL screensavers.
Oh, and of course dual-head doesn't seem to want to work in either OS (Windows makes a valiant effort).
Maybe I just got a bad card out of the box, but the relative stability in Linux makes that seem doubtful. A friend of mine had similar problems with a Radeon 8500 and the CD drivers, but in his case the first update to drivers off ati.com fixed things.
> 1. Not all channels seem to be supported by the Guide+ guide... (Oxygen, WB, and a few others in my area)
I, for one, would gladly trade Oxygen, food, women's entertainment, and a lot of other channels for actual useful channels.
Ha...you moron nice karma, now suck it.
An original SGI R5k Indy, with a 2GB scsi hdd and 128mb ram can be had on ebay for around $100 right now...
Of course, it won't run windows, but it'll do anything you want to a bit of video.
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
Shut up you terrorist sympathizing wimp.
Don't compare being an alert defender of democracy,
to nazism.
Nazism threatened the stability of greater europe, and killed
millions in the process.
It is wannabe humanitarians and liberals who are the most
anti-semetic inside. Come out you jew hater, come out and admit it.
You would get off on seeing the jews discriminated against for their
race and religion, but not the arabs.
Fucking hypocite.
You are losing your Crisp ringbarer. Making such long and toughtful
posts is useless, I suggest you go back to quick and dirty trolls.
Agreed.
Why is it that everyone who comes out with hardware with some kind of video recording ability, they tout it as "tivo functionality"? I'm not a big fan of how some companies abuse trademark law, but if I were tivo, I'd crack down on this misleading nonsense.
Just because you have hardware that records MPEGs, doesn't mean you have anything even remotely close to what tivo and tivo-like systems provide.
And to answer your question about if there are any good alternative software out there that "more or less" makes something of a decent tivo clone, I don't know of any. There are bits and pieces here and there that record and playback video, set up timed tasks, and I believe, even read program guide information, but AFAIK there is no freely downloadable software that does everything and has a nice interface.
Can you tell that I recently upgraded the drivers for my AIW 128 Pro card? After about 2 minutes in Ghost Recon, it would lock up. I tried a couple of times to unsuccessfully revert back to the old drivers. An email to ATI support went into a black hole. I finally got the new drivers to uninstall properly (I think), and the old ones installed, but the game still locks up occasionally. Damn ATI and their shitty drivers. I didn't have ANY problems for a whole year with the original drivers. I got the card for the ability to watch TV on the PC, and get some old video tapes to digital format. It was OK for that, but I would be very leery of buying another ATI card.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There is an incredible difference between a device that will record video to a HDD and a TiVo (or any device in the same class as a TiVo). If the all in wonder has the same tv capture functionality of the Ati Tv-wonder, it's really quite pathetic. TiVo for all intents and purposes changes the way you watch television. Ati's video capture software can't even change to a channel that isn't below or above the one your currently watching.
After being a long time purchaser of ATI video board I had decided to upgrade my current Rage 128 AiW board to something faster, mainly cuase my frame rate in Return to Castle Wolfenstein would drop to 4fps while storming the beach under shell fire or in heavy fire fights. Anyone who plays FPS's know that you get slaughtered with a low framerate. I had loved that Rage128 card and had hated giving up the TV options.. i use the input alot to stream video to friends or tape stuff off the tv/vcr. I do have my satellite directly connected to my pc so that I can watch stuff while doing work.
I was deciding on getting the ATI 7200 or a GeForce 3 ti, low end as i didn't want to spend a lot of cash, Then i noticed the 7500 came out, previously ATI only offered the 8500 AiW at some stupidly high price. So I bought the 7500 AiW, as it has all the same features as my old card, and more.. also it's got a better 3d chip so i should be fragging people like a badass!
I was impressed with the card.. but it didn't blow me away.. all the standard features of the old card were present, and some new ones. I really like the ability to float the tv window transparently so you can have it ontop of an applicaition but still use all the buttons that are under the tv panel. The Tivo like feature on it sucks ass.. maybe my computer is too slow (Celeron 600 with 256mb ram)but tv is unwatchable in that mode, it lags behind, clips the audio and video and then the play back or pause takes forever to work. I consider it unusable. Maybe I do need some faster hardware but that sort of stuff should work on a 600mhz chip. Lastly, how was RtCW? well, frame rate jump drastically, now heavy firefights it drops to around 15 to 20fps, in normal situations it holds steady at 50 to 60fps and doing nothing well it says it hits 70 to 90 fps. I wasn't that impressed.. I figured a new chip like this should give a min of 30fps at any given time (esp since i'm at 640x480 rez). Looking at how old my Rage128 is, it seems to be a pretty powerful chip, after all the 7500 did not eclipse it drastically. I wasn't blown away by new lighting or textures, it just seemed about the same only with less lag.
that's my 2cents.
b
Another advantage is that it's a stand-alone device. You can plug a VCR in one side, a DV camera into another, and do the conversion automatically. Works with ANY platform that has 1394 inputs and drivers.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm getting really tired of the crappy quality of my $50 WinTV card. I'd love to be able to have a cron job grab my favorite programs for me, but I can't seem to decide which card I should get. The Hauppage card is terribly inadequate.
Which would be the better card to use in linux?
The Matrox Marvel G450, the Radeon 7500DV, or some tv-only card w/tuner?
Not only is it cheaper, but both multimedia and 3d functionality of the card works under linux. With the 8500DV, there is no accelerated 3D support. I don't think the released version of GATOS has the right PCI IDs, but I get the impression that in CVS it is supported great.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What is the best "plug it in and it just works" card?
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I got my OEM-AIW Radeon 7500 at NewEgg for around $165, shipped -- the OEM version just didn't come with any games, but all drivers were included. I haven't had any problems on my W2K, Dell pentium-2 266mhz, 192mb RAM -- but my processor really is too slow for good capture for TV-on demand, scheduling with low resolutions works well, and the quality of the TV picture is EXCELLENT. I don't even have cable -- just a rabbit-ear TV antenna. I was really surprised it looked so good.
The RF remote works pretty well -- it can even control the cursor for other windows programs, but it's just about impossible to see the cursor from far away, alas.
I disagree with the user who said he "could read his closed captioning" -- mine is very clear.
I noticed that there is even a really cool feature which allows you to schedule a TV transcription with image captures to an HTML file (making it look like a storyboard). -- very cool -- and unexpected.
In general I've been happy with mine -- especially since I don't have room for both a monitor and a TV. Also I like how it has 4 different types of video capture -- and then at different resolutions, etc. (I'm at a low-res capture with my p2-266, but it still works! (sometimes with small dropouts, though))
I agree, it has a way to go to reach TIVo, but as "a poor man's tivo", I'd still wish for a faster processor than my 266mhz dinosaur. I'm actually considering gettting a new machine so I can really take advantage of its features.
In general I'm really happy with it, and look forward to future software improvements with even more features.
One thing more: I wish it had an AM/FM tuner so I could also capture Radio(!!)
There's a very simple reason for that: one receiver means one channel. With DVB digital television, one receiver could theoretically mean multiple channels from one multiplex, as it depends on the capabilities of demux (and decoder(s) and so on), not the actual receiver front end.
Now, You're not going to get multiple receivers on a single TV/Video card for some time, as each receiver takes real estate on the board. You can see how much just by looking at the card: the receiver is the part enclosed within the metal cover. It's perhaps about 40*80mm (1.75"*3.5").
What I really would like is pure receiver + demux cards for DVB-(T/C/S) reception. Cards which I could just tell the tuning parameters and request specific PIDs as separate streams. That way a small piece of software could just receive a single channel and store it on disk for each card, without any recompression (end result would be whatever was in the air/cable/sat - mostly SDTV 3-7Mbps CBR MPEG2 streams, perhaps some additional meta-data). If I wanted to watch something while storing, just have a second process read the (constantly growing) file on disk.
Might I ask how you got your WinTV card to work under Linux? Ever since I switched from the Red Hat 6.x series to the 7.x series, mine has been completely unusable^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcrappy. Attempting to use it seems to cause erratic behavior up to and including system lockup. I didn't change the card position on the board, didn't change anything but the OS. I finally broke down and put it into my Win98 box (where it works, sorta, except that it conflicts with the IRQ for power management, meaning that system doesn't like to wake up when it goes to sleep).
What is your Slash Rating?
Try bouncing the beam off the ceiling? Works for my RCA (my speaker assortment blocks my line-of-sight from couch to IR port on the TV).
What is your Slash Rating?
A month ago I was in the market for a new video card and after looking at the geforceX cards and the Radeon 8500 cards I settled on the Radeon 8500 due to it's price and performance stacked up against the Geforce cards in the same and higher price ranges. After three weeks I am back to my Geforce 256 card and the Radeon 8500 is sitting in it's static bag on my desk. It has to be the worst hardware purchase I have ever made. The hardware itself may be very impressive stacked up to the comparable Geforce models but that isn't the problem.
ATI's inability to write a decent driver has caused this card to be a huge failure in my book. I play a good amount of quake 3 and in the earlier driver revisions it would lock up my computer every round or 2. Then some un-supported beta drivers came out that made it lock up less frequently but messed up the rendering of quake 3 worlds horribly. Version after version of drivers have come out and seem to fix one problem and introduce 3 more.
Issues like the frame rate randomly dropping below 30 and staying there till I reboot. The edges of a world being visible because of gaps in the texture rendering. Random lockups, a few random reboots.
And before I get 30 replies saying that the radeon is a great card and works for me and you have a crappy computer. Any other 3d video card I put in this machine works fine. I have yet to have a framerate, rendering, lockup, reboot, etc problem since my Asus Geforce 256 card went back in. And believe me I tried EVERYTHING I could think of, bios flash, every driver known to man on the system update, os reinstall (2000 and XP) couldn't use linux as a test platform as XFree86 doesn't have 8500 3d support yet.
These were a pain to get but my store has them www.computerstop.com my site lists it for 199.99 but I know it should be changeing to 189.99.
So, I don't know anything about TV cards. At all. But I bought a super-cheap version a while ago at a surplus store for $25. I don't really watch cable television, but I wanted an easy way to plug my video game consoles into my computer, instead of leaving a television on my desk just for video games.
The issue is, the screen shakes a tiny bit all the time. You get dizzy if you play mario for more than an hour at a time (which has become a sort of built-in self-restraint.) Now, the reason I'm getting shitty performance is that I bought a shitty card. I understand that. But is there some hardware specs that would have clued me into that fact? Besides the price tag?
I'm happy to shell out more for a better card, but I'd like to be able to point to SOMETHING in the specs and say "That's what I'm paying for."
Besides the extra 0 in the price tag.
These all-in-one cards are cool, but what happens when the graphics technology they employ becomes outdated? What you're left with is a piece of junk--a feature-loaded card that you don't want to put in your only AGP slot because the newest games don't play nicely with it. Solution? Upgrade your card. Then you lose all of your TV functions with your upgrade.
It happened to all of the 3dfx Voodoo 3500 owners out there, and it will happen to the people who buy these things.
A better, more flexible solution is to get whatever graphics card you want, regardless of TV/TIVO functions, and then just supplement with the PCI TV card of your choice.
It's been working well for me: I had a TNT accelerator in this box along with an old, reliable BT-based TV card (complete with remote control, thank you!). The TNT card is long gone, but my television card isn't. I haven't had to worry about getting a TV tuner for my graphics card because I already have that functionality in this computer.
I had a ATI Rage Pro with an old ISA ATI TV card, worked great in linux and FreeBSD, all I had to do was install the drivers for X from the gatos website (http://gatos.sf.net/), restart X, and run a TV program. Admitedly the quality of my setup wasn't great, HOWEVER, it did look as good as windows.
:)
As for PVR type functions, I'm not shure, there are tools out there, but I wasn't interested in that so I didn't look into it.
Hope this helps
I was surprised how cheap it was, relatively. I did some MPEG captures from a videotape over a s-video cable and RCA stereo cables. Took me about 10 minutes but I got it working. Final result was pretty nice looking for $200
I also play Dark Age of Camelot using it and the performance is very nice. I get beautiful graphics at a very nice speed running at 1024x768
As a previous poster said, the drivers and software suck.
I tried using an AIW Pro 128, as well as Radeon, but the problem is that the software drivers that they provide don't work correctly. Microsoft provides drivers, but they don't take advantage of the card's features.
I've tried helping 3 people with these cards, and it all came down to the drivers messing up the OS. Blue screens galore.
All 3 people, including myself spoke to technical support and their response is: "Wait until we get our new drivers up on the website."
Why do they sell a product that they can't develop proper drivers for in the first place?
Avoid AIW. Try something else.
Actually, folks, you have me to thank for the release of this product.
:-)
This lower cost unit most certainly wouldn't have been releas6ed if I hadn't just purchased the top of the line Radeon for more than twice that
Regardless, I like the unit, and the Tivo-like functions (and great remote) are well worth it.
You're all quite welcome. Go enjoy the price break.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Well unfortunately there's no software even close to tivo like functionality from reading the other comments so far. So THAT'S not even an option, unless you're going to code it yourself. (which I'm seriously thinking about trying to do, under linux of course)
Just want to add my voice to those who has been downing the software here.
I've been using a AIW 128 pro for quite a while. The card is okay, but as people has mentioned the software simpley sucks. And ati doesn't release new drivers for anything but their newest product and when they do it's extremely late and then only for the latest MS OS.
I rand with the extremely crappy 6.x version of their MultiMediaCenter under win98 (no NT version, so dual boot). When they finally released a working version 7.1beta it was w2000 only. That was march 2001. Noting new for the AIW 128 since then, unless i upgrade to Win XP.
No thanks and never another ATI product.
Maybe I'll try matrox next.
(yes, I tried writing to them, using the forms on their web site - never any kind of reply, not even a form letter).
TC - My Photos..
Paul.
Your right $200 is NOT an opening price point card. Especially when you consider that you can get an 64MB GeForce2 MX-400 for about $45 and a cheapo TV cap card for about the same. How bad do you need that extra integration and and extra slot? About a $100 bad I guess?
There are a couple of differences, the main one being the lack of the cool RF remote.
Paul.
I did great on my tnt 16MB 2xAGP on a Pentium III 450 and now I use a Athlon XP 1500 with a Geforce 2 MX 32MB and my framerate is double but I get killed more often. Maybe there are just more people cheating. Damn counter-strike.
I tried to capture next. Horrible. The sound wasn't synced with the video on most attempts. The video had a thin line at the top which turned out to be the desktop behind the "full-screen" capture view. Most of the dark scenes had a faint haze line running from left-to-right.
The software took forever to load. ALL of ATI's programs were slow. Oh, did I mention that all the included software (Ulead's and ATI's) used stupid buttons instead of menus. So you either have to get the book out to figure out which stupid button does which stupid function. Or you spend 5 minutes mousing over each button to read the mouse-over popup description. If you used the software every day, sure you would eventually memorize all the buttons, but for the casual users, it is an annoying experience. Also, the free (although slight nagware) Aist program MovieXone software is much more capable and intuitive. For instance, to do a simple crop of a video in Ulead you have to spend 20 minutes to finally figure out that you specify a crop at the beginning and the end of the clip. The default is to crop at the beginning and slowly widen the crop back to full screen at the end of the clip. WHAT??? This is a crop we are talking about. I expect crops, wipes, brightness, contrast, cutting and pasting controls to be the most basic of functions that should practically be performed automagically, not something where you have to lug out the manual.
The ATI box advertises full 720x480 capture capability, but Ulead Studio (the included software package) said my hardware only supported 356x240, except from a DV camera source.
So I took it back to the store. I didn't even try the 3D game capabilities since I didn't like the idea of a $200 paperweight. My next attempt will be to get a DV camera and record my analog tapes to the camera and then upload through 1394 Firewire in full resolution glory.
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
I have been using the Rage Fury Pro to record movies onto VCD for a few years now. MMC 7.x supports recording of many formats plus you can detail your own format. The built in VCD format works great and although at 800x600 the image looks pixelated, at 640x480 you can get a clear and sharp image.
And of course you can then burn your VCD directly onto a cd or simply copy the resulting mpg file to a cd and view it with any MPG viewer.
More info on VCD's can be found here as well as tons of utilities to convert them and clean them up. http://www.vcdhelp.com/.
RFP can be picked up for $59 USD all day long and supports the same basic functions that the AIW does in regards to acting like a TIVO. It might not run Quake at 300 FPS, but will adequately handle all modern games at 800x600x32. The DVD playback is awesome.
Oh and I forgot to mention, the Rage Theater chip which enables the VIVO is the same in all the AIW's and VIVO cards nad the DVD playback hardware is the same. For $59 USD, I will suffer with only 40 fps running Quake decent TV recording and awesome DVD palyback.
This morning the story said it came with an IR remote, hence my past. Now it says it comes with a remote.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And this is news because....
Seriously, I've had one in my system since early February; got it at Best Buy the week it was announced.
Is this confirmed true or not?
Go infatida!
I am into the copy and paste.
On a positive note, the ATI All In Wonder series offers a lot of value packed features include the Multi Media Center not available with other capture cards. Mostly, like being able to record LEXX with the digital VCR feature when I know I wont be home on a Friday night. Then I can watch it later and not mess with videotape!
With that said, I would like to offer a very serious warning. This warning is to those considering the purchase of any ATI capture card. For I, will never purchase another ATI product again.
My intention was to ARCHIVE all of my existing and aging VHS multimedia. This is permitted under the terms of copyright law as "Fair Use". I have some really good movies I purchased on VHS over the years and I cannot afford to replace the entire collection on DVD, even it they were all available on DVD. Besides, I have already paid for the movies. I can't help it if the tapes are going bad.
Macrovision, an anti-copy technology implemented on VCR's over ten years ago is still being used today in more effective forms. It prevents you from being able to dub a video onto another tape from VCR to VCR. Computer digital capture doesn't even notice Macrovision and will capture any VHS tape.
Our friends at ATI are in bed with those anti-copy groups. They intentionally built in measures to DETECT Macrovision and PREVENT capture from any VHS or DVD that uses this anti-copy technology. They did this on purpose. VCR's suffer the Macrovision effect mostly my accident since Macrovision tricks the automatic gain circuit in them. There is no AGC circuit in video capture boards, at least not in the way there is in a VCR. So ATI went out of their way to cripple the capabilities of an otherwise good capture card. They didn't even have to do this by law. There are plenty of other capture cards that completely ignore Macrovision.
Also, what ATI calls VCD standard is completely off the mark. They offer a VCD capture mode that captures in a variable bit rate, and only 1.05 bps, which is below and off spec to the actual VCD standard. The result is an extremely low quality capture that has to be ran through a program such as TMPGenc to be corrected and actually usable in order to burn a working VCD disc.
ONLY PURCHASE THIS PRODUCT if you do not intend to archive your old VHS movies or capture anything that might have anti-copy technology such as VHS, DVD, some new Digital Cable broadcast, or from a Sony DSS unit.
Details? Visit www.vcdhelp.com and learn what I've mentioned here and much more.
-Roach
Leave it to Slashdot to review a product I just bought two days ago. Anyway, I want to do my own review on the card, just to let others know of the problems I encountered.
First off, I used to have an original All-In-Wonder card about 5 years ago, and it's still alive and well in my linux server. I loved that card, but 3D sucked until I added a 3dfx card. I ran those for a while, then the GeForce series came out, and I jumped on the ASUS 6600 Deluxe with the TV features. (ATI had me hooked on TV on my computer, so I couldn't live without it.) Well, 2 years later, my ASUS card begins to fail and I started looking at a new card--it came down to the Radeon 8500 or the 7500 AIW cards. Since I don't have a DV camera or any other type device, I figured I'd save the $200 and get the 7500 (after consulting a friend who also recently purchased the card).
I had some problems with the install, mainly with getting the remote and the TV display to work properly. The driver and software installs were actually quite painless (AMD 1.2 GHz, Win2k, just for reference). It turns out that the program for the remote is buried in the application directory, and the shortcut in all the software is wrong. After fixing that, the control worked fine. As for TV, I had no picture, but had sound. It turns out that when you have the TV composite out connected to a VCR, it makes the TV out the primary display, and your monitor is a cloned desktop. Make sure you switch that before you get upset like me that you have no TV display.
Let me say that if you have a TiVo, don't bother getting this card. If you also have a higher end graphics card and do a lot of gaming, don't get this card. However, if you have a GeForce 256 or older card, want decent TV record/playback, and do moderate gaming (with nice effects) then this card is for you. I have had no problems running my 3D games like I did on my GeForce 256 (the 7500 AIW runs like a GeForce 2 MX, so it's adequate for most games). The Guide Plus software (only for windows) allows you to download local channel guides, and set the TV to either watch or record automatically. But as someone else said already, it's dumb and doesn't gather watching habits or anything--not bad though if you just want to record something without being there. I'm still having some problems with recording video (audio and video get out of sync) but I think that's because of the settings I'm using for compression (you can use MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI, ATI VCR, or WMF). ATI is aware of the "10 second sync" issue with AVI recording, and are "working to resolve the problem".
In all, I really do like the card, especially the time-shift feature and the remote. I've bordered on saying that I love the card, but the recording issues are the only thing that holds me back.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
is there an mpeg2 encoder for linux that can encode at real time? is there an interfrace to this card? anyone have any decent links on this?
i've seen on linuxtv.org's site a hardware mpeg2 encoder which looks nice although it starts at 330$ and i'm not sure you can just order one.
It you are looking to run this card under Linux it is not a known good card via GATOS. The 8500DV is (which is why I bought that over the cheaper 7500). I have not seen any known good reports for the 7500 AIW. Though you can use it as just a video card ... the whole point is that it's a cheap capture card though, right?
p
:-).
http://gatos.sourceforge.net/supported_cards.ph
You do need the very latest 4.2.0 XFree et. al.
I personally am most excited about the abilty to control the house via the nifty remote
bt878 capture card reviewt vrave/pi nnaclepctvrave.htm
http://www.vcdhelp.com/reviews/pinnaclepc
I am looking for a good cheap tv capture card which can record mpeg2 at a dcent resolution,(i want full screen play back), Any one got any suggestions?
_________________________________________________
I own an AIW RADEON, and the drivers/utils were absolutely maddening, on *any* version of Windows. And this is on a card that I payed over CDN $400 for.
Untold person-years were spent by many people in forums trying to figure out what worked best with which driver. Answer? Nothing.
I swore I will never buy another ATI card.
Jeremiah! Scifi with boobies is good, even if I have already detected it being a little formulaic.
I agree, traded mine for an Nvidia Personal Cinima. The ATI drivers were constantly locking up during recording and even just sitting idle. The Personal Cinima is far from a perfect PVR solution, but the fact that I can leave my media computer on for months instead of just days now is more thn enough of a plus...
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
tv pause is a mostly unused feature of the masses.
Basically if I wanted a tivo I'd buy one and hack it to remove the depandancy on the stupid service. I wanted something to record mpeg2
You have to register with them and they SEND YOU A CD. You can't download updates like a normal company would allow you to. Can anyone explain that? What are we gonna do - download the programs and run them on a system without their graphics card?
I have an Radeon AIW myself, and I had a bunch of problems getting it to record and then play back the file it just wrote (it would say it's a bad file). That's unforgiveable. My machine runs Win2k, which I have otherwise had no problems with.
You can turn off the autorecord suggestions feature. So you don't have to use it if you don't want to.
On the other hand, I can't understand why anyone could possibly complain about this feature. It uses disk space that is not being used otherwise. So it costs you absolutely nothing to have these programs recorded for you. Even if the TiVo never once managed to select a program that you were remotely interested in, it would still cost you nothing. But if just once, TiVo caught a show that piqued your interest, then the autorecord of suggestions feature will have been worth it.
Because only unused disk space is used for the suggestions feature, it works alot like the Linux buffer cache, where memory that is not being used will keep files buffered in memory. I've also heard people complain about this Linux feature; they think it's wasting memory, and just can't seem to understand that that memory would not have been used anyway. So it either sits there doing absolutely nothing, and is a complete waste, or does something that has a chance, maybe just a slight chance, but a chance nonetheless, of being useful.
TiVo's suggestions feature is not really like MSWord's autocorrect, because it doesn't interfere with your use of the box otherwise. I guess it does interfere a little bit - it makes the Now Showing list longer, which will make it slightly slower to navigate. But really, the effect is so minor, you'd really be splitting hairs to complain about that.
And yeah, I guess you could write your own suggestions program, but it would not be easy. More power to you if you can do it, but it would take alot of work.
BTW, I work for TiVo so please bear that in mind when you read my defense of TiVo features.
Anyone having any luck getting these Radeon All-In-Wonder's to run on Linux?
The DV means that the card does more than the standard 7500 or 8500. The DV adds more AV features to the standard card. However, the features added are not the same across the cards. For example, the Radeon 7500DV does not have the Firewire port as the 8500DV does, although I'm not sure what type of effect this has. The 7500DV has a different turner from the 8500DV. This card is a middle of the road performer for gamers considering it's benchmarks. It's comparably with the nVidia Geforce 4 MX4400. The AV capabilities are what sets it apart. However, after reading some of the posts here about the compability and stability issues and the poor software, the DV in both the 7500 and 8500 versions is looking less and less attractive.
The WinTV PVR card does take a lot of work to get it going, but once you do it works well.
There is 1 major program with the mpegs(2) it captures. There seems to be a delay with the audio. Just fire up TMPEGEnc and do a multiplex and its fixed.
You can also use TMPEGEnc to edit the video, it works really well.
The mpeg1 encoding is bad, but you have the open of telling it the bitrate that you want to use.
The mpeg2 is not bad, I usually capture at 4MB/sec to fit 22mins of video on a cd.
You can capture up to 12MB/sec if you need to.
I do 6MB/sec if Im not going to archive to cd.
Yes I know its not a tivo, but I can archive my shows to cd or convert to divx if I want to.
Here are some links...
http://pvr.opcenter.de/ for discussion on the card
http://www.shspvr.com/ this guy has good info on the card
http://www.vcdhelp.com/ for your (s)vcd needs
That's kinda strange...I just downloaded the update about 2 days ago...if you lose the base drivers, then they send you a cd...
I see...so the islamic extremists were working in the kitchen? They probably learned how to make a grease fire or something in Al-Queda's training camps...
MMC 7.6 is available on ATI's site, which is the latest version, and many people are using it with thier older ATI cards.
GLOO! FOOG.
I pooped out a shit and ate it.
I've had one of these for a couple of months now, and it's not like I had to go to a lot of trouble to get it (walked into Best Buy and there it was)... really on the ball, aren't we? ;)
This thing's alright. Don't bother getting it for the TiVoish software -- it sucks. But it's a pretty good card overall, DVI output as well as svideo, RCAs, and maybe coax (not at home so this is off the top of my head). The RF remote is handy (especially the DVD player), though I'd like some sort of plugin to run Winamp or something since their media library software's pretty lame.
Oh, and if you don't have much hard drive bandwidth (like if that piece of garbage Win2k stops recognizing your drives as UDMA), the TV stuff is going to suck. A lot.
I have an ATI Radeon VIVO running under Windows 2000. I found that every now and again the card would lose all OpenGL and Direct3D capabilities. Re-installing the ATI drivers or DirectX didn't help. Nor did the 'repair' option in the Win2K setup program. The only solution I found was a complete re-install. I contacted ATI about this problem and eventually after exchanging a number of e-mails they sent the drivers back for testing. I never heard anything after that. Even now there is a 100% reproducable error with the current drivers trying to play DVDs on a TV.
Interestingly I bought the Radeon after realising my PC originally came with an ATI Rage Fury Maxx. This card is touted as 'for gamers only' and for good reason too...The ONLY operating systems it supports are: Windows 98, Windows Me. That's it. No Linux, no Windows 2000. Windows XP has 2d support only which doesn't count.
I also had an ATI TV tuner card. It had worse output than the cheap Pinnacle card I also picked up and the picture was always cropped incorrectly. The capture software was next to useless.
I have the 'original' All in Wonder Radeon (or should it be called 'Classic'?). I have not been impressed by it at all. It was massively expensive, the TIVO functionality is completely unreliable, completely proprietary (making it hard to have custom data driver interfaces to it... oh no! you MUST use their stupid little interface. The TV tuner likes to be very selective about what channels it will tune in, and the sound likes to switch in and out of modes regardless of what all the other devices hooked up the same input are doing.
Is this the hardware, or just typical Crappy (tm) ATI drivers?
TIVO should produce a free version of their PVR software for computers that uses their subscription service. I had the impression that the service was their revenue model, and that they were losing money on the hardware anyway. The money is in the software, with competitors poised to take their leading market position.
-- "I'm open to falling from grace"
> it doesn't work without a massive fight under
> windows 2000.
All that really matters is Linux support. You
should have migrated away from Windows by now
anyway.
The recording can be MPEG1/2, AVI, WMV, or ATI's VCR format. Resolutions up to 720x480 and a bitrate up to 15mb/sec. Some people have even been able to record straight to DiVX.
Pausing TV is optional...you don't have to use it, it is not on all the time. You can use TitanTV to schedule programs without having to put in day/time, but there is no repeating ability unless you do punch in day/time.
No, its not fully featured as a TiVO, but the big features are there (pause, recording) and for $399 (i bought the 8500dv it right when it came out) I got all that plus many other extras and a fast 3d card too.
Not too shabby if you ask me.
8500DV-
solidstate silicon tuner (better picture)
2 firewire ports
64mb ddr
230mhz cpu
190mhz ddr ram
AIW8500-
analog tuner (lesser picture)
no firewire
128mb ddr ram
275mhz cpu
275mhz ddr
AIW7500-
same as 8500 except slower cpu and mem and less memory i think.
All have the same capabilities as far as TV and recording AFAIK.
I've always used 'xf86config' to configure X There is a warning...in fact, a few if I recall correctly...
>Guide+ guide... (Oxygen,
Oxygen? Isn't that "The Chick-Flick Channel"
Gee, you'll miss out on the "Meryl Streep Marathon," and "Sally Fields' whiniest moments," and . .
;)
hawk
I can't wait for the day when I can go, "hey what was that Trek episode where the Enterprise was trapped in a spider like web. hmm..."
I have no pants and I must scream
Thanks for the information. Really helped.
I didn't have any trouble setting up dualhead on a Matrox G450, but I can't get Linux to recognize the second output on the Radeon 7500. It's supposedly doable in Linux (although Xinerama and DRI weren't compatible on this driver due to some sync bug last time I checked); I just haven't been able to figure out how. Do you have a Radeon 7500 working in dualhead? If so, would you post the DVI output's "Driver" section of your XF86Config file?
I thought I have read here that TIVO records every click you make! That alone should be enough to scrap TIVO.
I have a TIVo under a bunch of garbage in my office here. I unplugged it a year ago and it's staying that way.
The automatic recording of shows was a total waste for me because there are three people in the house and it was loading so many cartoons for my daughter that there was never any room left on it. That was one of the first features to be shut off.
I bought an ATI 7500 for my brother a few weeks ago and installed in on his 2ghz machine with a 19" monitor. Sure looked good to me. I don't mind picking the shows to record. Install was a breeze. His cable modem sucked down a weeks listing in seconds, so that wasn't a problem.
I haven't played with it since so I can't comment on playback, "season tickets" and such. But I am planning on buying a new machine within a month or so and it will have an ATI 7500 in it.
Switching channels on a cable box doesn't bother me since I don't need on with my cable (100 channels are enough!). Besides we primarliy watch movie from NetFlix.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
who the hell channel surfs from another room?
Even with a card that can decode OTA hi-definition TV signals it seems that NOTHING can decode digital cable. What's up with this, and what can be done to fix the problem?
Also, what's with all these cards retrieving programming information over the web instead of through the cable line?
[insert witty comment here]
I just finished documenting a library that works in both Pascal and C++ and supports Microsoft-style variants. So you have NULL, Null and Nil. Burp!
And what could be more geeky than a device that turns your computer into a PVR?
Oh yeah, and if it does freeze up you have to follow the necessary hard reboot (unplug/plugin) with an immediate soft reboot. Otherwise it freezes up again in about 20 minutes.
There's every indication that this is due to an incomplete software download. It's a well-known bug, but Tivo is in denial. They prefer to blame defective hard disks, customers who use splitters, and cable companies that fiddle with the vido signals. I've heard reports that the fix is the same as the cause: a software upgrade. Alas, Tivo no longer does these every few months. Can't imagine why!
Wish I'd gotten a ReplayTV.
At the risk of seeming to totally lack a sense of humor, I have to point out that some folks don't have their computers and TV sets in the same room.