ATI Theater 650 cards available

[ptaylor]

It definitely looks better than my PVR-250. It's at least on par with the ATI 550 card that I had. Watching fast action (football) on it is about the same as my PVR-250, but with a crisper picture... (Things are still a bit jumpy when the camera moves really fast, etc.)

I'm planning to get a splitter to split my HD signal probably this week. Along with my PVR-250 and ATI HD Wonder, I should be able to record either two SD channels and one HD at a time, or two HD channels and one SD. (There have been times in the past that I've wanted to record two HD streams at once, but had to settle for one being SD)

[foolio]

I'm Confused.

Does the card have dual analog tuners?

Do you have to manually re-setup the card to make it switch to DIGITAL mode for HDTV? On the HEXUS message board, they state that with Windows MCE, you can tune both analog and digital at the same time. Not possible with sage?

thanks

[ptaylor]

Sorry if I've confused you - The card has an HD tuner and an analog tuner, basically, but you can only use one at a time. I also have a PVR-250 and an HD Wonder card, so I already have one SD and one HD tuner. The 650 will let me do either one, but I don't have a splitter for my HD yet, so I haven't set it up in Sage to do HD.

As for setting it up that way, it's the same as with most other cards with more than one input (think S-video and/or Composite In). It sees the Digital tuner and the Analog tuner as different inputs, so you can set it up in Sage twice and Sage will know that it can't schedule both to record at the same time since it's just another input on that card. I'm guessing that there is something that is physically used with both tuners, otherwise you should be able to use them independently. For what it's worth, I only see one VERY TINY piece of metal on the card that must be the tuner. (It says Samsung on it) So, perhaps saying that it has SD and HD tuners isn't right - Perhaps it only has a single tuner that is capable of tuning SD or HD.

Edit: To further clarify, when I mentioned recording two SD and one HD or two HD and one SD shows at the same time, I was including the capabilities of all three cards. (PVR-250, HD Wonder, and 650)

[Jesse]

Hi,

My pq is quite good too. I am so much happier with how sage looks with these cards. It is now very hard to tell the difference between sage and our sony D* set top box. Really no comparison to the pvr500mce they replaced.

Now for the bad news. Since installing them my vid card freaked out (9800pro agp). It kept going into "vpu recover" mode and then finally lost a bunch of my settings that enabled dual monitors. It seems to be ok now that I moved one of the capture cards to a differenct slot.

The other issue that has cropped up is stuttering during live playback. This only happens sometimes and only seems to occur when I change the channel. When I first fire up sage and watch it is ok. Once I change the channel things get jumpy. If I pause for a minute or so and let the encoders get ahead of me a bit then it smooths back out. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Jesse

[foolio]

Originally Posted by ptaylor

Sorry if I've confused you - The card has an HD tuner and an analog tuner, basically, but you can only use one at a time. I also have a PVR-250 and an HD Wonder card, so I already have one SD and one HD tuner. The 650 will let me do either one, but I don't have a splitter for my HD yet, so I haven't set it up in Sage to do HD.

As for setting it up that way, it's the same as with most other cards with more than one input (think S-video and/or Composite In). It sees the Digital tuner and the Analog tuner as different inputs, so you can set it up in Sage twice and Sage will know that it can't schedule both to record at the same time since it's just another input on that card. I'm guessing that there is something that is physically used with both tuners, otherwise you should be able to use them independently. For what it's worth, I only see one VERY TINY piece of metal on the card that must be the tuner. (It says Samsung on it) So, perhaps saying that it has SD and HD tuners isn't right - Perhaps it only has a single tuner that is capable of tuning SD or HD.

Edit: To further clarify, when I mentioned recording two SD and one HD or two HD and one SD shows at the same time, I was including the capabilities of all three cards. (PVR-250, HD Wonder, and 650)

Thanks for the clarification - that makes perfect sense. Was wondering if there is any signal loss from using a splitter to split a HD antenna? I get borderline signal strenght right now with a DVICO HDTV Gold (older version) and any signal drop would not be tolerated by that card. How is the HD reception in the ATI 650 compared to the DVICO?

thanks

[jryan15]

it appear that this card has 1 sd and 1 hd tuner, does the hd tuner tune sd as well?

i keep seeing comparisons to a pvr500, so i'm trying to understand if this has dual tuner capability...

[malore]

I ran out and bought a 650 and have had nothing but trouble with it. I installed the card and then realized I could not easily read which coax input was which so I grabbed the manual and hooked the cable and DTV antenna accordingly. I installed the latest drivers from the ATI web site. I then fired up the ATI DTV program I had from my HDTV wonder card and it saw I had two tuner cards and asked which I wanted to use, neither of which is labeled 650. I choose one card and the picture came up no problem. I then quit and choose the other one and no signal. After much swapping and testing, I looked at the color quick installation diagram and it shows the DTV and analog cable inputs in reverse of the manual. I then swapped the cables and I finally had a HD signal. So the cart is right and the manual is wrong.

While setting up the tuner in SageTV I experience several lock up when it tries to tune a signal after the tuner is first selected. Disabling FSE seemed to help this. I was only presented with Digital Tuner as an option at the top. Is it supposed to show Digital and Analog? Once Digital Tuner is selected I could choose the source as cable or broadcast. I tried adding the tuner twice once and broadcast and other time as cable, but it always replaces the previous tuner source. So then I test the card by using sage to watch live TV. I get an error message about it not working correctly and look and see that a file is being written called something with the word buffer in it and not the show name. So I quit out of Sage and go ahead and use the CD to install catalyst and whatever drivers. After reboot, I mess around with catalyst media and digital and analog seem to be working. I try setting up the tuner in SageTV and I see a TV signal in the source set up for the first time. I then watch a live HDTV show, everything is good. The .mpg file in now correctly name. I set the show to record and then try to watch a second HDTV show using my old HDTV wonder card. No signal. I did notice that the catalyst media program seemed to come up when using the 650 tuner in Sage, which I couldn’t figure out since I thought I disable all ATI background programs, I uninstalled Catalyst to get rid of this problem. After much more testing and fighting, I used DTV to watch a show using the HDTV wonder tuner and then start sage and have it start a show using the 650. The computer locked up. So my guess is that my two ATI cards are incompatible together.

[malore]

Originally Posted by jryan15

it appear that this card has 1 sd and 1 hd tuner, does the hd tuner tune sd as well?

i keep seeing comparisons to a pvr500, so i'm trying to understand if this has dual tuner capability...

You can record a single show either SDTV or HDTV, so not a true dual tuner like the pvr500.

[blade]

Originally Posted by malore

You can record a single show either SDTV or HDTV, so not a true dual tuner like the pvr500.

Why do people compare the two then. They are completely different products IMO.

[Jesse]

Hi,

Why do people compare the two then. They are completely different products IMO.

I may be the culprit in comparing the ATI 650 to the pvr500. My comparison was only in regards to SD picture quality and not any other features either card may have. I have not even tried the ATI's HD tuner as I already have two vbox HD tuners. I would not go so far as to say that "They are completely different poducts." They are both hardware encoder cards. They do, of course, have features that differentiate them, but it is valid to compare them from the standpoint that I did.

Again, it was not my intention to compare them in any way other than SD picture quality via SVID input.

Now, if I can just get rid of the live tv stuttering on my client......

Jesse

[Jesse]

Hi,

The other issue that has cropped up is stuttering during live playback. This only happens sometimes and only seems to occur when I change the channel. When I first fire up sage and watch it is ok. Once I change the channel things get jumpy. If I pause for a minute or so and let the encoders get ahead of me a bit then it smooths back out. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

More testing has revealed that this only occurs on the client. The only real differences between the main box and the client are the vid card (ATI on primary Nvidia on client), and the use of FSE on the client (the ATI card will not tolerate FSE). Tonight I will try killing FSE on the client to see if it helps. Kind of a drag since the client needs FSE to do HD smoothly.

Jesse

[Diginerd]

malore,

Interesting issue. I installed the ATI software when I put the card in,but it doesn't pop up when I launch Sage...

My cards appear as "ATI Analog" or some such, but you can pick the digital tuner and it works just fine. I also pulled the "Add same card Twice" trick for Analog and Digital reception.

Once I got the whole thing running with one card I went and got a second one, it popped up as anticipated and now I can use both.

So the 650 for sure plays nice with another one of the same, but that doesn't help you in this case. :-(

[rfutscher]

I think you will find that the card has one tuner but two modulators. The tuner sends an IF signal to both demodulators

When you tune an analog station the analog demodulator decodes the IF signal and then the video and audio is MPEG encoded.

When you tune a digital station the digital demodulator decodes the the IF signal into the transport stream. The transport stream was MPEG encoded at the station. It has the video, audio and data streams for all the sub channels. The data streams contain close captioning, program guide information, stream maps and other data. Older cards recorded the transport streams and you could play back any of the sub channels. Newer cards de-multiplex the streams and only save one sub channel.

[Jesse]

Hi,

Anyone else seeing problems with playback of live tv on the 650?

I tried disabling FSE on my client but it made no difference, I still get stuttering with live tv. I cant believe it is a network/bandwidth issue as live playback of HD works just fine.

I guess I will try and get some debug log info. and contact sage about "official" support for this card.

Any suggestions in the meantime would be very welcome.

Jesse

[doublebogey]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Hi,

Anyone else seeing problems with playback of live tv on the 650?

I tried disabling FSE on my client but it made no difference, I still get stuttering with live tv. I cant believe it is a network/bandwidth issue as live playback of HD works just fine.

I guess I will try and get some debug log info. and contact sage about "official" support for this card.

Any suggestions in the meantime would be very welcome.

Jesse

I installed the 650 the other day, but only for SD, replacing my WINPVR-150. Live TV quality has been fairly good, although I found that this card appears to give better quality with the Cyberlink Decoder, as opposed to Purevideo. I did notice stuttering with VMR enabled. Once I switched to the default renderer, which appears to be overlay, stuttering disappeared.

As a side note, I also ran ATI's own Media Center software, and live tv was even better with that than with Sage.

Phil

[blade]

Originally Posted by doublebogey

Once I switched to the default renderer, which appears to be overlay, stuttering disappeared.

Default is not overlay it is VMR7.

[doublebogey]

Originally Posted by blade

Default is not overlay it is VMR7.

Ah... thanks for that. That's good to know.

[Jesse]

Hi,

Thanks for the tip on the renderer. I will give it a try and see. I just know it's gonna kill hd playback if I cant use VMR9/FSE. One problem at a time I guess.

Jesse

[Jesse]

Hi,

Tried default renderer, no change. Disabled FSE, no change. Disabled 3d accel. no change. Switched to overlay, no change.

Am I just going to have to give up on "live" tv and just timeshift everything a few minutes? I sure cant go back to the poor pq of the hauppauge card.

Any suggestions welcome.

Jesse

[stewart710]

Dell Home has it for cheaper than Best buy, If you don't mind waiting a few weeks.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=A0719470