Can Sage handle 3 ATI E-HOME WONDER cards?

[snoop244]

I have the setup you are looking to test. Luckily, it's on one of my backups, so I'm willing to play around with the registry. I have looked at the registry settings in this area and I have to confess to being a bit confused about bitrate settings in general. What I am seeing in the videoquality key appear to be four quality settings 2000000 4000000 30000000 60000000. Since there appears to be no published specs on the e-home wonder, I'm assuming a safe test would be to move all of the settings to 110000000. I assume this would approach the maximum bitrate for the card???? If your assumption is correct, and the card goes to this for it's quality settings, then it should result in a better/bigger file.

For the record, I find the e-home wonder performs fine at the default quality setting, but I can't let sleeping dogs lie! I'll let you know how things turn out when I get a chance to fiddle with it.

S.

[snoop244]

Sorry, I think I threw an extra zero into those settings.

I have completed the tests by replacing all of the MCE settings with 11 Mbits, then 9 and finally 6Mbits. There appears to be no difference in the file size. Still 2 gig an hour. I assume this means that the e-home's drivers do not pull in these MCE values under Sage. Oh well.

I'm running Sage 2.15.

[heffe2001]

Well, it was worth a shot. I currently use a Adaptec Videoh PCI at 2g/hour, and am happy with the resulting recordings (we don't usually do any sports or anything like that), so I'll most likely pick up a Ehome or 2 after our move. I hope at some point though that Sage supports the ehome's settings.

[TunaBoo]

Problems with the e-home wonder

1) ATI driver problems. ATI has driver problems with _ALL_ of it's products. It makes drivers just good enough to get it out the door, and then never updates it again. People who have been in the industry for multiple years know that many potentially good ATI products are worthless due to lack of driver support.

2) Cost. So it's $70ish. You can get a oem PVR250-15 for $90 off ebay shipped. That is easily worth the difference.

[snoop244]

Of the 15 or so video card products I've owned, I've only had two problems: one was a sis chipset and the other nvidia. The 10 or so ATI products I've owned have given me no problems. Maybe I'm the only one.

Again, people need to realize that these cards were not meant to be sold retail. It's possible that ATI won't continue to manufacture this type of card, but all evidence would suggest otherwise. This point has been made above and I won't repeat it here. It's impossible to know whether they will release updated drivers publically but, either way, the drivers that come with it work fine. Possibly the best way to determine ATI's future support would be to figure out whether any of the major producers of MCE systems plan to integrate it.

I'm guessing that out of all the current crop of capture card manufacturers, ATI can build these things at a lower cost and with better distribution than any one else (assuming they choose to distribute it at retail). Where I live the stores are still full of 3 year old Hauppaugge stuff. Try to get a 250 or 350 here. Forget it, unless you want to pay 3 times the price of an e-home wonder.

I'm happy to wait for generic support for MCE devices in Sage.