Tv Wonder Elite

[mike909]

I'm looking for opinions on the functionality of the 'TV Wonder Elite' card with 3rd party programs, be it free (vdub), or not (BeyondTV). Seems like most reviews I read say the same thing....Great hardware, crappy software. Well, how granular can you get with the capture settings of these 3rd party programs?(bitrate, resolution etc). The hardware is great, but without good software to controll it, I can't buy the card. I know it works with 3rd party programs, just looking for some personal experiences with it. Thanks.

[mike909]

*bump*
The reason I want this card, is it seems to be the only one which can hardware encode mpeg2 and also allow me to capture in a less compressed avi. Can anyone atest to this?

[edDV]

*bump*
The reason I want this card, is it seems to be the only one which can hardware encode mpeg2 and also allow me to capture in a less compressed avi. Can anyone atest to this?

I have no experience with the card, but the main reason you would want it over the well proven PVR-250 is for the 3D comb filter for NTSC or PAL decoding. It was designed as a premium solution for HTPC but I can find no reviews on its MPeg2 encoding performance.

[hrlslcbr]

I have the card, and I can confirm that it can capture to MPEG-2 and uncompressed avi, and that the quality (mainly of the uncompressed avi) is excellent.
GB-PVR has nearly perfect compatibility with the card, and you can use it to capture from the TV tuner or composite/S-video (only in MPEG-2 format).
And until ATI fixes all the bugs with their software you can use GraphEdit to capture to AVI.

To sum up; great hardware, bad (bundled) software, but now we have GB-PVR (free) that works perfectly.

BTW, MPEG-2 encoding... well, some free encoders do a better job...
Uncompressed avi; flawless.

[edDV]

ATI has had a 10+ yr problem with software. Matrox too.

Is software and driver competence somehow retated to temperature? ... , or sun exposure? Maybe it's Canadian beer?

While I'm ranting, ATI also seems incapble of describing their hardware in other than marketing hype terms.

Can anybody describe what this means in user context?

"VideoShader™
* Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
* FullStream™ video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, and WMV9 formats
* VideoSoap™ noise removal filtering for captured video
* MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration
o DXVA Support
o Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
* All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
* YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays†
* Adaptive Per-Pixel De-Interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion (temporal filtering)

† With optional HDTV adapter available from ATI Online Store "

Did I miss the white paper somewhere?

/rant

[hrlslcbr]

VideoShader: Some 'technology' developed by ATI's marketing division, that supposedly turns blocky and nearly unwatchable divx and mpeg video into high definition and quality video by using pixel shaders.

@ mike909: Do you want to know anything else about the card? I'd be glad to help.

[lordsmurf]

There's nothing wrong with ATI's own technology. Let's stop the non-sense bashing. ATI develops excellent hardware.

The problem is that the "TV WONDER" series of cards DOES NOT use ATI technology. They are just card built by ATI using cheap parts from others.

In this case, the BT8x8 or CONEXANT chipsets. They suck. The end. These chips are super-old technology and are not that good. In fact, they're pretty much lowest quality there is.

Unless I missed something, this card does PURE SOFTWARE MPEG ENCODING not hardware.

If you wanted a good ATI card, you needed a THEATRE 100-200 chipset card (AIW Radeon series, some VIVOs).

Or for hardware encoders for consumers, the HAUPPAUGE PVR-x50 series of MPEG HARDWARE cards.

[lordsmurf]

Can anybody describe what this means in user context?

"VideoShader™
* Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
* FullStream™ video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, and WMV9 formats
* VideoSoap™ noise removal filtering for captured video
* MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration
o DXVA Support
o Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
* All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
* YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays†
* Adaptive Per-Pixel De-Interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion (temporal filtering)

† With optional HDTV adapter available from ATI Online Store "

I don't think some of that stuff was intended to be written about this card being discussed.

That VideoShader stuff should be for the graphics cards. A few things are just for AIW cards (decoding). VideoSoap refers to ATI MMC filters.

Their site is sloppy. So if there's error, I'm not at all shocked.

[hrlslcbr]

Sorry smurf, but the TV Wonder ELITE uses the theatre 550 pro chipset, which is made by ATI...
I have the card, and I get 0% CPU usage while recording a TV show... That couldn't be SOFTWARE based encoding, could it?

http://www.ati.com/products/theater550/index.html

[aaronrus]

There's nothing wrong with ATI's own technology. Let's stop the non-sense bashing. ATI develops excellent hardware.

The problem is that the "TV WONDER" series of cards DOES NOT use ATI technology. They are just card built by ATI using cheap parts from others.

In this case, the BT8x8 or CONEXANT chipsets. They suck. The end. These chips are super-old technology and are not that good. In fact, they're pretty much lowest quality there is.

Unless I missed something, this card does PURE SOFTWARE MPEG ENCODING not hardware.

If you wanted a good ATI card, you needed a THEATRE 100-200 chipset card (AIW Radeon series, some VIVOs).

Or for hardware encoders for consumers, the HAUPPAUGE PVR-x50 series of MPEG HARDWARE cards.

doesnt the wonder elite have the new 550 Pro ALL hardware encoder chip? i believe it does.. if you want the SAME card , for half the money, buy the sapphire theatrix. it is $74 shipped from www.newegg.com ive heard nothing but fantastic thinsg about the hardware sid efo this card.. but alas, liek everyone says, the software sucks ass.. use GBPVR with it..[/url]

[aaronrus]

the one thing that REALLY sucks about the wonder elite card is that it was supposed to be supported by MMC 9.04, according to the manual, but alas, f-ing ATI skipped over that version, and none of the later versions suport it. This card would absolutely RULE if they would make the next version of MMC work with the wonder elite... does anybody haver ATI's customer service email addy? I'm gonna spam them with requests for their techs to get working on that..

[mike909]

Well, today I read about 60 pages of a thread dedicated to this card over at hexux.net.
EdDV, it does seem that this card is 'capable' of capturing mpeg2 hardware as well as a less compressed format to an avi. How well this works I am unsure, but many seem to praise the gb-pvr software, and say it also works well with BeyondTV...so that takes care of the pvr functionaliy (or lack thereof) with included software.
That brings me to you hrlslcbr:
I have never used graphEdit. I was hoping I could use VirtualDubMod/Huffuv to capture to an avi...is that not the case? Is the Graphedit as intuitive as vdub?
Lordsmurf: All my reading tells me this is indeed mpeg2 hardware encoding...is this not correct?
I am leaning towards this cars rite now...just need to get a better idea of the uncompressed abilities. Thanks for offering your experience hrlscbr.

p.s. It does seem that the sapphire theatrix uses the same chip (theatre 550 pro) and costs half the price.

[lordsmurf]

The 550 card is a different beast all together, a PVR type hardware encoding card. It's good to hear the "wonder" cards are now off that BT/CX mess.

[pfh]

If I'm not mistaken, MaxiumumPC reviewed the 550 chip and their conclusion was it's not ready for prime time for the reasons aaronrus mentioned above.

[aaronrus]

If I'm not mistaken, MaxiumumPC reviewed the 550 chip and their conclusion was it's not ready for prime time for the reasons aaronrus mentioned above.

thank god for graphedit and gbpvr.. i can handle owning this card in the interum until ATI makes it MMC compatible, since all i need to do is capture VHS to DVD.. the 3D adaptive comb filter of the 550 pro, combined with my external Prime Image Time Base Corrector, will yield superb results.

[mstone321]

Is the comb filter useful on an external source through the S video
input? I thought the comb filter helped clean up the output of the
on-board tuner module and external composite inputs but does
nothing for Y/C inputs.

[edDV]

Is the comb filter useful on an external source through the S video
input? I thought the comb filter helped clean up the output of the
on-board tuner module and external composite inputs but does
nothing for Y/C inputs.

The S-Video Y/C input should assume luma-chroma separation was done upstream. The 3D comb filter should be in the path for the composite input. It is also needed to decode the tuner NTSC/PAL.

[hrlslcbr]

I can assure you all that the video captured with the theatre 550 pro chip (I have the Theatrix, which is the same as all the other cards with the same chip; only the remote control is different) is excellent. I have captured to uncompressed avi with graphedit for a long time and (apart from 3 system crashes because of the crappy drivers) have had perfect results.
The card CAN capture to uncompressed avi, bypassing the MPEG encoder completely, and captures the full 720 possible pixels (so it doesn't capture an odd number of pixels and then stretches it) providing a perfect aspect ratio when capturing at 720x480/576.

mike909: That thread in Hexus.net has a member called hrlslcbr... that's me .
I posted there a comparison of the same frame of Shrek 2 captured with the theatrix and directly ripped from the DVD. I'll post them here if I find them.
And Andrzej (someone who works at ATI) has helped us with all our driver and software issues in that same thread.

So, the only thing that ATI needs to make this card perfect is a new version of the drivers to fix all those little bugs the current ones have.

EDIT: found them.
Original pic (from the DVD):
http://img118.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img118&image=o14vc.png

S-video (avi, no compression)
http://img136.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img136&image=t11ez.png

S-Video (MPEG-2)
http://img55.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img55&image=1m7kq.png

[mike909]

hrlscbr,
I actually remember your posts in the other forum, just didn't pick up on the name being the same. Those pics look good to me, and after a lot of reading, I am confident that this card is the one for me. I am just wondering...why do people want MMC support so bad? Is it really that much better than gbpvr and/or BeyondTV?
My last question hrlscbr, is about graphedit. Is that the only way you know of for bypassing the onboard mpeg2 encoder? I guess I need to do some reading on graphedit to see how it works, I'm just familiar with virtualdub. Oh, and last question #2: do you know if that theatrix card is compatable with MCE 2005, like the Elite card boasts? Far as I can tell, they are the same card, so whatever one can do, the other can also. Thanks for your informative responses...definately helped me in my decision.

[edDV]

Looks like it might be a contender.

[mike909]

Ed,
Yes it does indeed look like it's going to be the closest I can come to the 'best of both worlds' card I am looking for....just need to iron out how functional it is concerning bypassing the hardware mpeg2 encoder.

[edDV]

I'll be waiting to see if someone else has success with this card. I've been considering a PVR-250 for use with BeyondTV 3. This might be a better solution if it works.

[junkmalle]

Original pic (from the DVD), S-video (avi, no compression)

4x enlargement:



Why the dithering pattern? Or is it from the DVD player? It's in the MPEG cap too.

[hrlslcbr]

mike909: You can also capture with AMCap and VirtualVCR, but you'd get no audio.
GraphEdit isn't actually a capturing programme, it's a programme for building 'graphs'. You have to select each filter needed to capture and write the file and connect them properly, but I can send you a pre-made graph if you like, so you'd only need to open the graph and click 'play'.
I got used to it in no time; it's a great app that does a lot more than capturing from a card (play video files, DVD's, etc).
With GraphEdit you DO get audio.

[hrlslcbr]

junkmalle: I believe it's my DVD player, as I also capture from my GameCube and haven't noticed that effect. I will see if I can spot anything in my other captures.

EDIT: this is an image of a GameCube game (which has a very weird alternating pattern of interlaced and progressive video...) captured from S-Video . This is the original picture captured to MPEG-2@9500kbps using graphedit (I did not deinterlace it).

[junkmalle]

hrlslcbr, I get the same type of dithering pattern on occasion capturing digital cable with my Hauppauge PVR 250.

The GameCube cap didn't show the dithering pattern -- so it probably is the DVD player. I always assumed the problem was in my cable box.

[hrlslcbr]

Yeah, I always thought my DVD player's quality wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, but I had never seen that dithering pattern. It also crops some pixels from the left.
But at least we know that the card isn't the responsible for that dithering thing; as I said, I've always had perfect quality from my captures. I've just transferred a VHS to DVD and got a lot of people saying that the DVD looked much better than the VHS...

[mike909]

Thanks hrlscbr,
Well, that graphedit certainly looks different than anything Ive used before. I may soon be asking you for an example one. Are you aware of any differences between the Elite and the Theatrix cards? I think I read that the remote that comes with the ati is RF, and the theatrix is IR. Just wondering if theirs anything else different.

[hrlslcbr]

Absolutely NOTHING different. Yes, the RC that comes with the ATI is IR and the one I have is RF. If you are worried about which one would give better quality, don't worry anymore. The cards are exactly the same and they produce the same quality (and I wouldn't pay more for a better(?) Remote control).
PM or e-mail me if you want me to send you a graph to help you use your card with GraphEdit.

[mike909]

So...the one you have is RF? Meaning the cheaper card comes with an RF Remote? Well, then theirs no reason not to get the theatrix then.
EDIT: Also, just wondering, do you use ATI drivers?