ATI AIW 9800, or what?

[Jay OBrien]

I'm selecting components for a new computer on which I want to do video work and also use it as an entertainment center. I about decided that an ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 PRO was the ultimate way to handle TV, capture, encoding and video.

However, in reading the ATI manuals on line, I've learned that the ATI cards that support a DVI monitor won't allow video to be fed to a DVI monitor and S Video to a TV set at the same time! That appears to eliminate the ATI cards for me. Am I reading this right?

Even if there is a way to feed a DVI monitor and a TV set at the same time, apparently the ATI cards run super hot, requiring a minimum of a 300 watt power supply and a direct connect to the power supply in addition to the power supplied via the AGP socket. The Antec Sonata enclosure I like comes with a 380 watt supply, so I wonder if that would be enough for the ATI card, several hard drives and other PCI cards.

Am I missing something? Suggestions?
Jay O'Brien
Rio Linda, CA USA

[lordsmurf]

I don't know of any card for less than $1000 that has dual output for both tv and monitor AND gives decent results.

[Jay OBrien]

Hi Lordsmurf,

First I want to thank you for all the effort you put into your web site. It has helped me a lot, and I really appreciate what you have done.

Thanks for your candid response to my post. I feared that answer. What can I do to feed video/audio to my TV set at the same time as a DVI monitor? I do own an ADVC-100, so I could easily take firewire DVI and convert it to S-video & stereo audio for the TV set. But I would then need something that can output to firewire at the same time as it is displaying on the monitor.

This really is discouraging, as I want to have a computer that receives TV, does PVR/TiVo stuff and feeds it to my TV set at the same time. Would I be better off with an external TV tuner, perhaps connected via USB 2.0 or firewire?

Windows XP MCE says it does what I want, but I don't want to buy a pre-made computer (with poor documentation on the components) just to buy XP MCE. And, I'm not sure that XP MCE will do what I would expect it to do.

Jay