ATI All In Wonder cards

[david151]

I havebeen doing a lot of research into building a dedicated system to capture VHStapes. I will definitely be going downthe road of capturing tapes as uncompressed video and from what I have read I think I will definitelygo for an ATI all in wonder card. Thequestion is what do people consider to be the best card in this range?

Fromwhat I have read the older range of cards with the theatre 200 chipset seem tobe the more respected cards on here, so I have been looking at some of thenewer cards from this generation such as the Atiall in wonder 9800 pro - what dopeople think of this card? One thing Inoticed about this card is it does not have direct S video connections on theboard meaning you need to use a breakout cable, which I was thinking wouldcause a theoretical loss in quality compared to if going direct to the boardwith good quality S video cable . I notethat some of the earlier ATI all in wonder cards had direct S video connectionson the board.

Asidefrom the old generation of cards I hear the newer cards aren't that great,however I was wondering how the All-in-Wonder X600 compares to the older cards? It is a PCI express card but from what Igather still has the theatre 200 chipset, so presumably is not that differentto the older classic cards.

If you were building a dedicated systemfrom scratch which card in the range would you go for?

[DB83]

If you are building a dedicated system maybe you would like to share your propesed specs - hardware, OS etc.

Just a few points, if I am not mistaken:

1. ATI A-I-W cards, even the older ones, do not have direct s-video connections. You have to use the break-out box that comes with the card.

2. The older cards, if you can get them (I see some on e-bay) have AGP graphics connections. You can not buy a new mainboard with this these days.

3. The older cards are resticted to WinXP maximum

4. Uncompressed capture ? Repeat my question about your intended specs.

[sanlyn]

Supposedly the best of the ATI All In Wonders were the Radeon 9600 and 9800 series. They were preceded by the still excellent Radeon 7500's which had smaller video chips (usually 64MB - which, by the way, I still use. With wide screen monitors, too. No problems). I have two 7500's and a 9600XT (128MB).

To connect audio, s-video and composite sources the AIW cards use a breakout adapter cable. Some cards used these cables (called "dongles") for both input and output. They look similar for each series, but they aren't the same. This is a pic of the bundle that came with the 9600XT:

[Attachment 12145 - Click to enlarge]
The purple cable at upper right is for input, the black cable lower right is output (can handle two monitors). There were DVI and VGA adapters- stick with the analog VGA output, DVI is too slow. These dongles are almost always sold separately on sites like eBay; often hard to find, but not impossible.

The PCIe cards tend to be slower. They're fairly decent cards, but people still prefer the old analogs. The best of the AIW's were analog AGP cards. You can still find AGP motherboards around at auction sites, but they are quickly disappearing. For some years Biostar and ASUS were still marketing these boards, which were mostly AMD 64 X2 (AM2 socket) boards. Along with the AIW's and Theater 200 chips you could also get their Theater 200 TV-tuner cards, which were PCI capture-only.

I bought my three ATI's in 2002 and 2004. They work with Win98, W2K, and XP. The AMD site no longer carries those drivers, but you can find people or sites still downloading them. The ancient PC's on which I used these cards could no longer be upgraded, and with the advent of Vista and PCI-only I could read the writing on the wall: easy and top-flight video capture performance with Windows would be a thing of the past. About 4 years ago I bought AGP cards and built two of my own XP PC's from scratch, spare parts, and ASRock and Biostar motherboards (AM2 sockets). I've had no problems with those PC's or software. You can still buy Windows XP and XP-PRO OEM editions on eBay, but they're going fast.

[david151]

The older cards are resticted to WinXP maximum

Actually I don't see too much problem with using a board that takes AGP as my build won't really be that obsolete. I don't know if people are aware but one of the last boards featuring an AGP socket was the ALiveDual-eSATA2. Please see this link:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=Alivedual-esata2

It will take a Phenom processor and from my research even a quad core. I can easily stick something in there around the 3ghz mark. It will also support 16GB of DDR2 ram and also supports PCI express. It offers true AGP and PCI express slots, unlike some of the earlier boards such as the ASROCK 4CoreDual-SATA2 and ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA. From my research it seems I could use an AGP and PCI express card at the same time, so will be great for the All in Wonder AGP and then a more modern graphics card for general PC stuff in the PCI express slot. The great thing is I know someone local to me who has one of these boards and is willing to sell - unless someone can suggest a better option?

I will build the system with 2 hard drives containing windows XP and windows 7. I may even select SSD drives now that the price is coming down. I will then get hard drive performance of around 300MB/s on SATA2 which will be plenty quick enough for uncompressed capture. For capturing good quality sound I will use an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard which I have currently in another build.

So really I don't see the system being that slow and obsolete, as it will work well both in windows 7 and XP environments.

[david151]

To connect audio, s-video and composite sources the AIW cards use a breakout adapter cable

I did not think the older AGP cards supported Audio? If this is the case why pass audio through the ATI card? Why not just plug audio direct from your VCR into your Soundcard?

[usually_quiet]

The older cards are resticted to WinXP maximum

Actually I don't see too much problem with using a board that takes AGP as my build won't really be that obsolete. I don't know if people are aware but one of the last boards featuring an AGP socket was the ALiveDual-eSATA2. Please see this link:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=Alivedual-esata2

It will take a Phenom processor and from my research even a quad core. I can easily stick something in there around the 3ghz mark. It will also support 16GB of DDR2 ram and also supports PCI express. It offers true AGP and PCI express slots, unlike some of the earlier boards such as the ASROCK 4CoreDual-SATA2 and ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA. From my research it seems I could use an AGP and PCI express card at the same time, so will be great for the All in Wonder AGP and then a more modern graphics card for general PC stuff in the PCI express slot. The great thing is I know someone local to me who has one of these boards and is willing to sell - unless someone can suggest a better option?

I will build the system with 2 hard drives containing windows XP and windows 7. I may even select SSD drives now that the price is coming down. I will then get hard drive performance of around 300MB/s on SATA2 which will be plenty quick enough for uncompressed capture. For capturing good quality sound I will use an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard which I have currently in another build.

So really I don't see the system being that slow and obsolete, as it will work well both in windows 7 and XP environments.

I think there is a strong possibility of problems using the above configurations with Windows 7. The motherboards that you mentioned only have XP and Vista drivers available from ASRock. I question whether you will find drivers that work for Windows 7. The AIW cards you mentioned only have Windows XP drivers available. Even if you have a second PCI-e VGA card installed for use with Windows 7, having an incompatible video card installed on the board at the same time doesn't seem like a good idea.

[jman98]

I'm not really sold on ATI cards and I consider lossless capturing of VHS tapes to be completely unnecessary overkill, but some disagree. Typically ATI cards rely on the CPU to do the encoding so I'd recommend that you use the beefiest CPU you can with any ATI cards.

I've got a Hauppauge Colossus card and I've been doing some VHS captures of old tapes that never were released to DVD/BD. I don't recommend the card for you as you cannot capture uncompressed video with it. However, I do want to point out that I've been kind of shocked at how crappy old commercial VHS tapes were. One of our forum regulars (I don't remember which one) fairly recently said that he's never seen a VHS capture that didn't have color issues and that has been my experience with my recent captures.

[david151]

The motherboards that you mentioned only have XP and Vista drivers

Well I have read some posts on other forums of people using this board on windows 7 without problems. I believe you can even build a hackingtosh from that board. Not sure what problems a non working ALL IN Wonder card would cause under windows 7, however I will just have to build the system and see. As I said I will also have a compatible PCI express card installed for windows 7 use.

[DB83]

A non-working All-in-wonder in Win7 means just that. It will not work. You will not get any picture on your monitor.

As to installing a second graphics card, it may work. Chances are it will not and the whole system goes down.

[DB83]

BTW that asrock mobo was available 5 years ago. Good luck in finding one now.

[david151]

As to installing a second graphics card, it may work. Chances are it will not and the whole system goes down

The only way I will know is to build the system and try, although people have said on other forums that they have been able to use 2 graphics cards at the same time.

[DB83]

As to installing a second graphics card, it may work. Chances are it will not and the whole system goes down

The only way I will know is to build the system and try, although people have said on other forums that they have been able to use 2 graphics cards at the same time.

Depends on the mobo, bios etc.

[david151]

Depends on the mobo, bios etc.

Yes I know, but as I say people have managed to do it it with ALiveDual-eSATA2. I can't seem to find the forum post I read on another site, however I definitely read of someone running 2 cards at once with the ALiveDual-eSATA2. But as I say the only way I will know is to build the system and play about.

[sanlyn]

I'm not really sold on ATI cards and I consider lossless capturing of VHS tapes to be completely unnecessary overkill, but some disagree. Typically ATI cards rely on the CPU to do the encoding so I'd recommend that you use the beefiest CPU you can with any ATI cards.

I'm one of those who disagree. You disagree with yourself as well in the next paragraph.

You don't encode with the AIW's. You capture with them. There were (and are) better encoders. The color depth and accuracy from the older AIW's is incredible, which is why people are still searching them out.

I've got a Hauppauge Colossus card and I've been doing some VHS captures of old tapes that never were released to DVD/BD. I don't recommend the card for you as you cannot capture uncompressed video with it. However, I do want to point out that I've been kind of shocked at how crappy old commercial VHS tapes were. One of our forum regulars (I don't remember which one) fairly recently said that he's never seen a VHS capture that didn't have color issues and that has been my experience with my recent captures.

Even the best retail VHS looks petty bad going to digital. The old CRT's were too forgiving in that regard. And encoders will balk at residual tape noise, which looks worse on DVD if it's not cleaned up.

[NJRoadfan]

I just built a system with an AIW AGP card. Best bet for a cheap system is an Intel 865PE based board. It supports all the faster hyperthreaded P4s to avoid frame dropping issues, and it has onboard SATA ports that most drives will work with. The only advantage a PCIe-AGP combo board will give you is better SATA controller support (PCI SATA cards based on first gen chips all have horrendous compatibility problems with drives) and the use of somewhat cheaper DDR2 RAM, but not much else in terms of capturing.

[Nelson37]

My last (of four) ATI cards is just about to be retired. The system it is installed in is failing, and I doubt I will replace the AGP board.

Haven't captured much in the last few years, after getting anamorphic widescreen, 5.1 surround sound, and subtitles all working, I just kinda lost enthusiasm for it. Can download most anything in almost as good a quality, though usually without the surround sound and subs.

I would agree the Theatre 200 chips seemed to be the best. Also take a look at the real-time encoding and filtering, though the last MMC had a poorer encoder setup. I forget which number this changed on, Ravisent I think it was, was not as good IMO as the earlier software.

Only the very earliest ATI cards, pre-AIW, had direct S-video input, SFAIK. No reason the breakout box would cause any problems.

[NJRoadfan]

My last (of four) ATI cards is just about to be retired. The system it is installed in is failing, and I doubt I will replace the AGP board.

Check for bad caps, its fairly common on some Socket 478 and Socket A motherboards.

[david151]

WHy do the All in Wonder cards have a seperate output cable like this one shown in the the Ebay listing?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-Radeon-All-Wonder-7500-8500-9700-AV-Output-Cable-/220994...item3374519c20

I can't see what these cables give you over the input cables? If I wanted to Dub back to Tape in a VCR why do I need a separate output and input cable as both cables feature Svideo etc. Why can't I just use the same cable for this?

Also why do the ATI cables include audio input? I thought all the card did was act as a pass-through to your soundcard? Why not just plug my device directly into the soundcard for the audio side? Why go through the ATI card to do this?

[usually_quiet]

WHy do the All in Wonder cards have a seperate output cable like this one shown in the the Ebay listing?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-Radeon-All-Wonder-7500-8500-9700-AV-Output-Cable-/220994...item3374519c20

I can't see what these cables give you over the input cables? If I wanted to Dub back to Tape in a VCR why do I need a separate output and input cable as both cables feature Svideo etc. Why can't I just use the same cable for this?

Also why do the ATI cables include audio input? I thought all the card did was act as a pass-through to your soundcard? Why not just plug my device directly into the soundcard for the audio side? Why go through the ATI card to do this?

Not everyone bought an AIW card to capture VHS tapes. The AIW cards were sometimes installed in an HTPC, where the card could be permanently hooked up to a cable box or satelllite receiver on the input side and a TV on the output side.

There is a reason why nearly all capture devices include an audio input. According to virtualdub's documentation "Capture devices that have both audio and video capture integrated usually use a shared clock to avoid sync errors between the streams."

[Gregg]

I used to capture a lot of VHS tapes on my old PC with (Pentium 4 /3GhZ and AIW 9600XT) without any problem. This card rocks.