Theater 650 based All-In-Wonder card? / PCIe Theater 650 tuner card?

[MrNeutrino]

AMD and AMD/ATI partners have been taking ages to get the theater 650 version of the AIW and standalone PCIe tuner cards out to market.

Where in the world are these cards? Anyone have any insights?

Any published information on when these cards from AMD / vendors will be available??

 

[bunnyfubbles]

last I heard, ATI was planning on phasing out the AIW all together...and this was before they became part of AMD...

 

[MrNeutrino]

bunnyfubbles, where did you hear that? Can you share some links to websites / articles?

Also, what about the 3rd party version of PCIe based Theater 650 card? I thought I read in the press releases / review articles that ATI was working with partners who were free to (and considering?) releasing various versions of the Theater 650 cards including one based on the PCIe I/F.

Is that off vendors' roadmaps too??!

 

[jasonja]

There has never been an All-In-Wonder card with a hardware based MPEG encoder, they have always used software. The 550 and 650 use a dedicated hardware encoder and are much better for TV than any of the All-In-Wonders. And I do think the AIW's have been phased out. You're much better off buying a 550/650 seperately and the video card you want. Then you can upgrade them seperately as needed.

 

[MrNeutrino]

sad fact is that even the 650 isn't available in PCIe!! I'm looking for something in the PCIe flavor.

BTW, as much as I like the stand-alone solution so that I can go with any video card + tuner, it:
1. takes up one more slot than necessary
2. Software on ANY standalone Theater 650 card - so far just the one from ATI - just plain SUCKS! Returned the otherwise awesome 650 card just because of the ever-crashing 'outsourced' OEM software. You don't experience this mess with the AIW cards where the software is all ATI in-house developed and MUCH more stable.

On that topic, what's up with the 3rd party vendors? ATI announced at 650 release last year that 3rd party vendors were already working toward releasing their versions of PCI / PCIe based cards.

How long can it take to take a reference design / card and release a PCIe based version when the 650 already natively supports PCIe?

Anyone know of any timeline when additional Theater 650 cards from 3rd party vendors are due to come out?

 

[MrNeutrino]

bump

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: MrNeutrino
sad fact is that even the 650 isn't available in PCIe!! I'm looking for something in the PCIe flavor.

BTW, as much as I like the stand-alone solution so that I can go with any video card + tuner, it:
1. takes up one more slot than necessary
2. Software on ANY standalone Theater 650 card - so far just the one from ATI - just plain SUCKS! Returned the otherwise awesome 650 card just because of the ever-crashing 'outsourced' OEM software. You don't experience this mess with the AIW cards where the software is all ATI in-house developed and MUCH more stable.

On that topic, what's up with the 3rd party vendors? ATI announced at 650 release last year that 3rd party vendors were already working toward releasing their versions of PCI / PCIe based cards.

How long can it take to take a reference design / card and release a PCIe based version when the 650 already natively supports PCIe?

Anyone know of any timeline when additional Theater 650 cards from 3rd party vendors are due to come out?

What software are you trying to run? I just use MS Media Center and it works fine. I don't even install any of the included stuff.

 

[MrNeutrino]

I'm one of those millions who doesn't have MCE - just XP Home.

If only MS had not been out of their minds and offered us MCE OEM version soon after XP released, when I was actually looking to get the MCE version. Since they didn't offer that OEM version a few years (?) back, I opted for XP Home OEM version. I detest the newer and pricier incarnations of MS' bloated OSes enough not to want to invest in even an OEM copy of Vista, at least in the near future.

Customers like us pay these companies to purchase a solution, only to get stuck with worthless software as in this case, that you'd be hard pressed to successfully qualify even as a vendor. Yet they choose to ship such broken card + software solutions to start minting money as soon as possible.


Bottom line, I'm trying to get ATI tuners to work in XP Home type environment using their shipping software. I also don't feel like investing another $70-80 in a stand-alone Beyond TV et al. when Vista OEM / MCE OEM copies are not too far off from that price point.

Anyone have high success rate (read: minimal / no crashes) using the bundled software?

Any other open source software that's known to work well with Theater 650 cards - or card as is the case right now?

Thanks.