TV on PC with ATI

[hamidjunior]

Does anybody have Powercolor Theater 550 pro? I can find bunch of users, wether glad or mad (especially on heXus) about Sapphire Theatrix. Also can find couple of official reviews of Powercolor. I know they are both based on the same 550 chip, but seems like Powercolor is better?

Also does anybody know is Powercolor supports anything else than NTSC? Would be uber nice if anybody compared them side by side.

 

[ciregnol]

I think they are all the same.

I love my Theatrix.

 

[xtknight]

This is analogous to mounting video chips on various video cards. Quality should vary by very little. However, the included software MAY vary. Usually all ATI chip-cards come with ATI Multimedia Center, which in my opinion is a superior program to anything else I've tried. Though the manufacturers can bundle their own software if they want, which could be better or worse. You will have to read a review on the card you're looking at and see what software it uses. Most likely it includes ATI MMC.

 

[Insidious]

Might want to consider a TV tuner that has onboard hardware encoding

That way your computer isn't crippled while you watch TV.

(Hauppauge has some reasonably priced solutions that do NTSC and PAL. I use the PVR-250 and like it)

-Sid

 

[ciregnol]

The Theater 550 Pro chip on the cards in discussion does have hardware MPEG 2 encoding.

ATI has changed their mind, and decided that this product is not, nor will ever be compatible with their own MMC. See the thread at http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=29031&page=1&pp=15 for more details.

The card works perfectly in Microsoft Media Center Edition, albeit at a very low volume (which future drivers will hopefully fix), and support for Media Portal and Beyond TV has recently been added, but is not yet 100%.