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  1. Member
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    please share your experiences with this card and what software you currently use it with.

    trying to find an adaquate software package is really tough, especailly being a 2k user. ive been through at least 18 myself.

    Only one ive found so far that comes close to satisfatory is christv.

    I heard MMC works with this card but can you even install MMC on 2k?

    I also heard that some people are having good success rates with winamp tv plugin.
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  2. Member edDV's Avatar
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    The card has been an extreme disappointment (Sapphire Theatrix 550).

    I'm using it with BeyondTV 4. It only seems to work for hardware encoding at high bitrates. Current MMC 9.13 was useless and destructive. It assumes you want to fill all your HDD with history.

    I didn't have the time or interest to debug the mess. I think the Hauppauge PVR series is a more reliable solution.

    Maybe somebody has done the debug work?
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  3. Member
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    i am quite impressed with winamp tv. high quality, ultra simple. even ps2 results in little lag. reminds me of amcap. i think i found the software of choice while dscaler hopefully gets support for the 550
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  4. Member
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    It's a decent card for capturing uncompressed video for PC-side encoding. The composite input is fantastic. That's about it, though. I echo all the other complaints about software support. I came close with graphedit, but even that couldn't get everything working properly. It's a shame, b/c the card does have potential, but after ATI did such a good job winning me over with my Radeon 9700/9800 cards, they've now lost me again.
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  5. Member Fos's Avatar
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    I got my theater 550 pro today , pal version. It's was a hell find it in europe.

    This card is superb compared with the old version , the ati theater 200 chip.
    i can capture without the TBC, without dropping any frames!!. This is really good.
    When the video jumps the theatre 200 dropped about 4 frames per second. This is 0 per second.
    I don't know if it have a frame synchronizer built-in (in the box say " 16 mb of memory")
    I tried to capture a macrovision tape and i couldn't (the picture turns to noise)

    The noise reduction is effective and it's works when you are capturing avi . It's very useful. I tried capturing a full of noise tape and it worked perfectly , without any ghosting effect!

    If i want to capture mpeg , i use ChrisTV. If i want video uncompressed i use amcap. Both using the ati theater audio part , not a soundblaster card.
    Since the audio came from the card , it's always locked and i haven't found any a/v sync issues in my captures. I never liked the sync of my captures with the theater 200. I always had to select "sync video to video by reesampling" in virtualdub for keep it in sync.
    The MPEG quality is very good , and it's better with the noise reduction. I really like it.

    Resuming

    Pros :

    -Effective noise reduction
    -Awesome video and audio quality
    -I can capture MPEG (chris tv) , uncompressed (Amcap) and DV (DV ,yes , using Pinnacle studio 10 )
    -0 dropped frames
    -0 a/v sync problems
    -Audio built-in
    - (EDIT) Virtualdub works fine with this card and with the built-in audio
    Cons:

    -This card comes with Powercinema 3 , not very usefull.
    -Using chris TV , the audio is mpeg and i can't select WAV when it should be available.
    -Should have a only software for capture MPEG and AVI , with PCM , AC3 and mpeg audio quality options. (let's see if a mmc comes soon)
    -VirtualVCR doesn't work well , the audio is choopy.
    -The same for iuVCR.


    I hope the New MMC compatible fully with the theater 550 comes to us someday..... or other ussefull software.
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  6. Member edDV's Avatar
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    What hardware encoded bitrate selections were you able to get with ChrisTV?
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  7. Member
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    i use gbpvr with my theater550. No issues.
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  8. Member Fos's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by edDV
    What hardware encoded bitrate selections were you able to get with ChrisTV
    from 1 mb to 15 mb CBR or VBR.
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  9. Member
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    I'm a little disappointed with the hardware mpeg encoder. I can get better quality using software mpeg encode in MMC. It took ATI months to enable half-d1 (352x576) and when it did finally work I get horizontal banding across the capture. A 352x576 with a bitrate of 3000 looks better captured using software encode in MMC than using the hardware encode in graphedit.

    Plus all the noise reduction, comb filters to me don't seem to do anything. I'm a big fan of ATI's capture chips so I hope everything works one day.

    Using a hex editor on the driver it would seem that the card is capable of vcd mpeg-1 and 352x288.
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  10. Member
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    guys, if you got issues try getting a _FAN_ over the theater 550 pro chip, it gets realy HOT when in use

    works well here
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  11. Member
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    I have a Sapphire Theatrix 550. I can tell you that trying to capture in uncompressed Avi will give you audio video sync problems. It's only good for MPEG2 capturing. You're better off purchasing another brand capture card if you want to capture in Avi format.
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  12. Member
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    umm..wrong.

    i have the exact same capture card and I do uncompressed avi all the time. If you are capturing to the same drive as your system drive yes you will get those issues..if your capture drive is too slow to handle the large data being written to the hard drive then yes you will get those issues..if you're system is bogged down with junk then yes you will get those issues.

    none of those point back to the 550, however. get a big, fast, second drive and clean up your system. you'll have no issues.
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  13. Member
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    Originally Posted by greymalkin
    umm..wrong.

    i have the exact same capture card and I do uncompressed avi all the time. If you are capturing to the same drive as your system drive yes you will get those issues..if your capture drive is too slow to handle the large data being written to the hard drive then yes you will get those issues..if you're system is bogged down with junk then yes you will get those issues.

    none of those point back to the 550, however. get a big, fast, second drive and clean up your system. you'll have no issues.
    How are you going to tell me what my experience was with capturing uncompressed avi with the 550 Theatre? It's the reason why I purchased another capture card (Turtle Beach Video Advantage). Unlike the Theatre 550, the Video Advantage card does what I've been looking for in a capture card. No audio video sync issues. By the way, I have a 160GB Western Digital hard drive that is strictly used for capturing uncompressed video.
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  14. Member
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    I could care less what your "experience" has been with it, nor did I in any way tell you what your experience was. Let me refresh your memory. You said:

    "I can tell you that trying to capture in uncompressed Avi will give you audio video sync problems."

    To which I told you you are wrong. How do I know you are wrong? Because my experience has shown that to NOT be the case. If you'd like a mathematical proof as to how this makes you wrong I'll be happy to give one.

    Just because you had problems with it doesn't mean everyone will have problems with it. This is what you said, however, by saying "trying to capture in uncompressed Avi will give you audio video sync problems." If your intention was to speak of your experiences with it you should have qualified your statement with "In my experience...has given me audio video sync errors", showing your true intent and command over the english language. Then I could not have responded with "wrong".
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  15. Member
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    I was disappointed by this card too. It came advertised with a large number of noise reduction and other image processing capabilities that turned out to not be usable during capture. I too spent weeks with graphedit, etc., and could get as far as seeing the effects turned on in the preview window and looking great, but I could not apply them to capture.

    The card does do a good job of uncompressed (huffyuv and lagarith for me) raw capture but I'm not convinced it was worth the premium, since much of the premium was focused on the image processing capabilties.

    I recently revisited the card and noticed that the latest drivers seem to enable some of these features, however my capturing is already done now so big help it was to me.

    The 550 ruined all goodwill that the 9700/9800 cards had built up in me for ATI and since then every video card purchase I've made or recommended as been with nVidia. ATI permanently lost a lot of its fans thanks to its terrible support of the 550.
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  16. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by sphinx99
    I was disappointed by this card too. It came advertised with a large number of noise reduction and other image processing capabilities that turned out to not be usable during capture. I too spent weeks with graphedit, etc., and could get as far as seeing the effects turned on in the preview window and looking great, but I could not apply them to capture.

    The card does do a good job of uncompressed (huffyuv and lagarith for me) raw capture but I'm not convinced it was worth the premium, since much of the premium was focused on the image processing capabilties.

    I recently revisited the card and noticed that the latest drivers seem to enable some of these features, however my capturing is already done now so big help it was to me.

    The 550 ruined all goodwill that the 9700/9800 cards had built up in me for ATI and since then every video card purchase I've made or recommended as been with nVidia. ATI permanently lost a lot of its fans thanks to its terrible support of the 550.
    PS: Sapphire Theatrix 550 Pro with current drivers from ATI.

    Amen. I haven't got any useful performance from this card this past year. I thought it must be due to the low performance Celeron 2.4 mobo I was using but the capture problems continue on my new Core2Duo using ULead, GBPVR or BeyondTV to control capture. It produces very low quality MPeg2 and quality doesn't seem to improve with bitrate. I just use it to record CNBC during the day --- dishwasher duty.
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