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ATi's All In Wonder Radeon 9700 Pro
FlippedBit writes "ATi has taken the wraps off their latest Swiss Army Knife 3D Graphics Card
with TV Tuner and Remote Control capabilities, that rival most discrete
solutions. The All In Wonder Radeon 9700Pro packs a ton of A/V features and is
driven by their new R300 VPU.
HotHardware has a look at this new beast and all its bells and whistles, right
here."
I hate to sound like a whiner, but this card would be perfect on my Mac. Between my game reviews, this would do it all - render by OS X games great, for my console reviews I could plug the svideo cables in for screenshot captures right to Quicktime/iMovie video.
At the moment I ue a Formac Tevion, which works well through the Firewire, but as someone who believes that less hardware is better, ATI should really think about making a Mac version of this card. I can't imagine it would be all that hard - the hardware is AGP on both platforms, so it would just be someone at ATI writing some OS X drivers for this device.
Not sure if anyone else cares about this, but I've been annoyed by ATI's lack of good video capture tools on the Mac since - well, since I started using Mac's in February of this year.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Should you be interested in a particular word or phrase from a captured show, you can search the close captioned database and playback will begin at the section of the stream.
That feature makes my day :) Kudos to ATI for adding something useful to the video recorder program.
Agreed. And here's the answer: a VGA to Component transcoder. Use that HD-compatible TV as a monitor for your computer. Now the only issue is whether or not ATI has added better custom resolution support for the 9700. The 7500 AIW I have sucks quite hard, as I can't get a custom resolution that gets rid of excessive overscan. nVidia can do it, so why can't ATI?
And as long as I'm making a wishlist, how about somebody make a VIVO card that accepts HD signals via YPrPb component input? I'd pay good money for that.
They also have a preview. (which is as good as most reviews)
The conclusion, just point to any tech site and you will find a review.
That's too bad, because I was looking for another 3D card to buy for my system.
After asking around what options there were for good 3D support under Linux, I bought an nVidia GeForce 4. Problem is, I'm having some severe issues with it. Running anything OpenGL that has some intense rendering (Return to Castle Wolfenstein, for instance) will do one of two things: 1) cause X to lock up, flashing Scroll Lock and Caps Lock at me once every second, or 2) spontaneously reset my machine. Obviously, this is not a good thing, and I'm actually quite disappointed.
It appears to be something deeper than a driver issue, though, as I get RTCW to crash under Windows in the exact same manner, and under the exact same conditions as under Linux. (Windows bluescreens, while X locks up.) I've tried Quake3, RTCW, and other simple OpenGL apps (glxgears, fsv, etc.), and all cause my machine to shit itself.
It's not a problem with the card, either, as I bought two separate GeForce4 cards from two different manufacturers, and both had the exact same issues. Plus, my system doesn't contain any backwoods generic parts; Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard, PIII Processor.
I just don't get it. It's a shame, too, because my previous card (3dfx Voodoo3) was a pain in the ass to get working with 3D in Linux. I e-mailed nVidia and posted a message to their forums, both of which have gotten me no replies.
I can't recommend nVidia at this time, and I've heard worse things about ATI's Linux support. Since Linux is my primary OS (I only installed Windows to test out the above scenario), I honestly don't know what to do.
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...is hardware MPEG capture. Decode they seem to have, capture would be ideal. The $149 Hauppage WinTV-PVRs have it.
that rival most discrete solutions
Until they come out with HARDWARE MPEG encode and decode on the card it rivals nothing.
My DV500 video capture card hardware encodes so my processor doesnt have to waste time doing it. My Hollywood+ and my DV500 card both hardware decode. (Cat a mpeg stream to the hollywood+ card and magically that mpeg 1 or 2 file is displayed.. the newer Hollywood cards do Divix (mpeg4) on the card. while the DV500 will do mpegs 1&2 DV and most AVI file types (Not mpeg4 without a firmware change)
coupled with my Geforce3 I dont see it rivaling anything. ATI's offering is still just a toy, A video card with some neato-things added that are useless for any professional uses (if you want professional results.. I dont see anyone desiring to buy a capture device for anything onther than editing... except PVR.. and if their PVR software that comes with the card is anything like what they send with the last iteration of the all in wonder... it will fail again.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Some may call the above post Flamebait, but it is true. Jeesh, I remember this same complaint being lodged against ATI back in 1992. Apparently, they are doing something right to still be alive today, despite this constant driver criticism.
I am not a hardware junkie, but I have been following recent "build your own home theater in a PC" sites, and the jury says: build your system around the limitations of your chosen graphics card. The ATI line of "do everything" cards offers unmatched versitility in the home theater PC market, yet you have to carefully match your requirements with your choice of hardware and software (and driver capabilities).
IOW, do your homework, build for today, and don't expect your ATI card to do anything wonderful outside of the scope of your current DIY project.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Read Anand's review. The R300's "Cobra" engine provides hardware MPEG-2 encoding assistance. Not completely, but enough to offset 1/5 to 1/4 of the CPU overhead. As I understand, no consumer-level MPEG-2 encoding hardware does all the processing onboard but merely offsets some work from the CPU. Of course, ATI has had MPEG-2 decoding assistance for a LONG time - since 1997. In fact, I have a H+ too and the difference in CPU usage levels between the H+ and my AIW Radeon when watching DVDs is negligible. The Radeon provides superior monitor playback and the H+ provides superior TV playback which is why the two still co-exist. One thing many people overlook is the fact that since the AIW is on the AGP bus, you don't run the risk of overloading the PCI bus when doing video capture and the like. Their PVR software has come a LONG way too. When I first got my AIW Radeon I cursed my decision but since December of last year the software has been excellent. I just wish there was something on Linux to rival it. There isn't. Nothing comes close actually.
I'd advise against getting an All-In-Wonder card if you run Linux, since the GATOS team (the folks doing 2D video capture, tuner support, and TV out) and the DRI team (the folks doing OpenGL 3D support) have yet to sync their code so that the two play nicely together. Thus, you can have EITHER video capture and tuner support, XOR accelerated 3D support. You cannot have both.
I could understand if this condition persisted for a few weeks - the teams are different groups with different goals. However, this has been the case for several MONTHS, and I see no motion towards resolving this.
This is one of the places that the bazaar approach is weaker than the cathedral approach - independant teams don't co-ordinate very well in such matters.
So, at this time if you want both tuner support AND accelerated 3D, I would suggest getting a seperate TV tuner card.
(And I am viewing this very post on a AIW7500. I have a classic AIW in my server in the basement, and in the past I've had a Voodoo 3500TV. I have some experience in this matter.)
(And I don't have time to fix this - I have to work on modifying the USB joystick drivers to report the hat as buttons so that I can use it under UT/US2003, getting ATA/133 & LBA48 working, getting video streaming working from my DTIVO, trying to find out why Wine has show regressions in the past week....)
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