Sapphire theatrix 650

[tawd1992]

I'm considering buying this card from Newegg for $65 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...AFC-C8Junction
What confuses is me is that the Ati 650 version has the hybrid analog/digital tuner, but Newegg's website says that the Sapphire 650 only has an analog tuner. I then went to Sapphire's website & they only list a Theatrix card that uses the 550 pro chipset. Does anybody know anything about this card?

[thatdude90210]

Sapphire's website does list the 650: link

The board layout of the Sapphire 650 card is exactly the same as the ATI 650 board, and is different from the ATI 550 board.

I don't know anything about this card, but I'm happy with a pair of theatrix 550 pro cards (along with an HDhomerun) in my Sage system.

[SHS]

I would not considering buying a ATI 650 it not dual tuner like HVR-1600 and 1800 which can record from both Analog and ATSC digital at same time.

[tawd1992]

Originally Posted by thatdude90210

Sapphire's website does list the 650: link

The board layout of the Sapphire 650 card is exactly the same as the ATI 650 board, and is different from the ATI 550 board.

I looked at the pictures of the cards some more & ordered it last week. What confused me was that Newegg calls it the Theatrix 650 pro & the only Theatrix card Saphire's website lists is a 550 pro. Saphire calls the 650 pro card a Theatre 650 pro.

This card is a deal for only $65. It has the hybrid ATSC/NTSC tuner, 650 pro chip & comes in a retail package with driver cd, input box, & an fm antenna. I'm not exactly sure why they call it "Lite", it comes with everything. I didn't see an option to get a free remote, but I didn't really want one anyways. Maybe the "Lite" means no remote control. When I get some time I'm going to tweak the picture settings & see how good the picture quality can be.

[jtshea]

I recently purchased the Sapphire Theatrix 650 from NewEgg. Picture quality is excellent. I have tried it in direct comparision to the Hauppauge PVR-150 and the HVR-1600 and picture quality is noticeably better, especially in terms of color bleeding. Have not tried the ATSC yet.

A couple of issues.

First, after installing the driver I had a tuning issue. All cable channels were showing interference due to slightly-off tuning. Had to use ATI utility to clear out all ATI software and settings. After reinstall, issue solved.

Second, there is a problem on cable channel 24 that I have been unable to resolve. See sample below.



I have done a lot of testing and process of elimination and it is clear to me that the problem is in the card or the driver or the tuning.

I have not been able to identify what type of interference this is. Also, I am undecided whether I am going to do an RMA exchange and try another of the same, or try the ATI version of this card. The version of the driver that came with the card is 11/2006, so it is possible that I may have received an older hardware revision of the card. Allegedly, there was some issue with ATI's first release of the Theater 650 cards and they were temporarily pulled from shelves.

[jtshea]

I ended up trying an ATI TV Wonder 650 for comparison. Performance was exactly the same as the Sapphire Theatrix 650 (and actually the Sapphire might have been slightly better). The ATI software package was nothing to get excited about.

Both cards show the same problem I am having on channel 24. I did not see this problem on the Hauppauge PVR-150 or the HVR-1600. Maybe the tuner on the ATI/Sapphire 650 is more sensitve or not shielded or filtered as well. At any rate, I think my problem on ch. 24 with this card is unique to my particular environment. You shouldn't worry about it.

That being said, I highly recommend the Sapphire Theatrix 650 for it's picture quality and value. It's not dual tuner.. you can't use analog and ATSC simutaneously. But the analog is sooo good, it's well worth it for the analog alone.

[SHS]

jtshea that a comm problem is know as electrical ground loop, All need is Ground Loop Isolation

[jtshea]

Thank you so much! That is the pointer that I've been needing. I did a Google image search on video ground loop and I'm seeing lots of examples of exactly my problem.

[tawd1992]

jtshea - I had what appears to be a ground loop problem also before I bought the Saphire 650 pro & it does seem more noticeable now with the Saphire card. The tuner must be more sensitive. I was planning on fixing this anyways, so it's not a big deal.

Out of the box I was a little dissapointed with the card. I first installed it on my Vista pc & using Microsoft's Media Center software didn't provide me with any way to adjust the picture settings. Some of the channels were a little grainy & didn't look very sharp. I found a post over @Thegreenbutton.com that explained how to adjust the 650 pro using graphedit & that made a huge improvement. Basically I changed the noise filter from "adaptive" to "medium" & raised the sharpness from 128 to 200.

I recorded Shawn the Sheep the other night & a poker show & they were definitely the best picture quality I've ever recorded with my pc. This card is hard to beat for the money.

[jtshea]

ATI has a control panel utility you can download for tweaking all the settings on the theater 550/650.

Once I get the ground loop fixed, I'll play with the noise filters a little too. The default noise reduction and mpeg settings on the Sapphire 650 are so much better than the Hauppauge PVR-150 and HVR-1600 that I hadn't even thought about going for even more improvement. Thanks for giving me that idea.

[Jesse]

Hi,

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I am having some problems with my ATI 650 cards. Would you mind saying which drivers you are using and if you found it necessary in install the whole "media center" program with the drivers?

TIA

Jesse

[tawd1992]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Hi,

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I am having some problems with my ATI 650 cards. Would you mind saying which drivers you are using and if you found it necessary in install the whole "media center" program with the drivers?

What sort of problems are you having? I noticed that whenever the screen turns mostly white I will get a high pitched noise & some artifacts will appear on the screen. I'm not certain yet, but this might have started happening when I went to the Catalyst 7.8 version of the drivers. I tried the card in my other pc with WinXP & it did the same thing. I'm going to try an older version of the drivers & see if that fixes it.

[Jesse]

Hi,

What sort of problems are you having?

Playback freezes and will hang the ui permanently with sagemc or for several minutes with the default stv.

Jesse

[tawd1992]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Hi,



Playback freezes and will hang the ui permanently with sagemc or for several minutes with the default stv.

Jesse

What driver version are you using? Have you changed your system configuration lately?

[Jesse]

Hi,

Thanks for your interest. It turns out the problem was related to my attempt to move to unc mapping for my recording drives. Check it out here:http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...6&postcount=22

Any thoughts on this?

BTW, what driver version are you using?

Thanks.

Jesse

[tawd1992]

I've never encountered that sort of problem so I don't know if I can be of much help. I've used practically every driver version that ATI has for the 650 pro. Around the time I upgraded to the latest drivers (6.14.10.250) I started noticing that whenever a scene would turn all white or have a lot of white in it I would get artifacts on the screen & a high pitched noise would stay on until the scene changed. I recently changed back to the driver that Vista update uses & so far I haven't noticed the white scene problem. I hear you on the ATI drivers, if you can find a version that works you don't want to change it because who knows what will happen with the new version.

[Jesse]

Hi,

Thanks for the tip on the latest driver. I rolled back to the driver that came with the cards. Something like 6.14.10.125? I will try moving up to the next to the latest.

Thanks again.

Jesse