All-in-Wonder or separate cards??

[dzachau]

I was wondering, which would be the better way to go to have great game graphics and good video capture: Buy the ATI AIW 9800 Pro, or go with the ATI Radeon 9800 and the Creative Labs Video Blaster Digital VCR? Basically, are the combination capture/video cards a good deal; or should one really look at a separate capture card?

[edDV]

It all depends so you need to do your research.

A good case can be made for separation. The two functions develop at different rates and it seems a waste to be forced to upgrade both when either side advances.

Gamers may want to swap out 3D functions at a state of the art pace. The capture function and tv tuner may be good enough to last 5 yrs.

Non-gamer media geeks may want to experiment with ATSC, QAM, PVR or realtime effects hardware, but be happy with a good 2D display card.

[glockjs]

if you need both equally go with the AIW. you are not gonna find a better cap card and a graphics card combo(buying two seperate) for anywhere near the price range

[thecoalman]

I had the ATI, it produces great capteures and the gaming capabilites are very good too but.......... If your working with source material such as old VHS tapes you may want to consider something else. The AIW isn't very friendly towards soureces that have flaws, IMO opinion and others it's a false MV detection. Whatever the case it's a frequent occurence with users of this card. The same can be said of other capture cards and even DVDR's but the AIW seems to have much less tolerance.

I've seen less and less of the posts about it, so either they fixed it or are just not selling as many anymore. or maybe many people have come here investigating it and hve found my rantings about it.

[lordsmurf]

I disagree on a "quality" stance. ATI is excellent and even has live noise filters and proc amp controls to fix source input.

False MV is something that attacks most cards, recorders, VCRs these days. ATI has it too, sure. But it's certainly not the only one, nor even a minority. A TBC or any other number of MV "cleansers" are available. See anti-copy post in RESTORATION forum.

The ATI ALL IN WONDER RADEON cards are some of the most powerful graphics cards, paired with one of the most versatile AND highest quality AVI/MPEG capture cards. Hard to beat that.

[gammite]

smurf,

i agree with you from the hardware aspect. but software wise ati needs improvement.

[ZAPPER]

I got to agree that ATI AIW is a killer piece of hardware. And it's software, while seemingly buggy, is fully capible. It is too bad that it is so hard to figure out without guides such as those written by Lordsmurf.

Something from Matrox may be a better choice depending on what you want to do and want to spend. I don't do the gamming thing and don't see the need to upgrade to the next level every time a new card comes out. I would rather spend the money on a rock solid card that will last the life of my PC and maybe into my next.

It may be time to consider a seperate machine for each hobby. While not really the cheapest route, you would be able to build each machine to the highest performance for the given task without having to sacrafice on one or the other

[brianwrx]

Seeing as you can get a ATI TV Wonder Pro for $29 after rebate in the US right now, I would buy a seperate video card and capture/tuner card. It should be cheaper than the AIW and allows you to upgrade independantly as someone else said.

Unless you want to have one more free PCI slot... Then go AIW

[lordsmurf]

Seeing as you can get a ATI TV Wonder Pro for $29 after rebate in the US right now, I would buy a seperate video card and capture/tuner card. It should be cheaper than the AIW and allows you to upgrade independantly as someone else said.

Unless you want to have one more free PCI slot... Then go AIW

The TV WONDER PRO uses inferior chipsets.
NOT A THEATRE CHIPSET.
Not the same thing, bad idea.

Upgrading a video card is not needed for most people.
Not unless you're an uber-nerd video game player.
In that case, you must pick your priority: games or video.
Or buy two computers.

smurf,
i agree with you from the hardware aspect. but software wise ati needs improvement.

Totally disagree. ATI MMC is rock-solid for capturing. Installing it may be tricky, but so are many other things, when it comes to computers. It just takes patience and RTFM. Also, learn how to USE IT, don't rely on the faulty presets.

[edDV]

lordsmurf,

Which MMC version would be best to install on the AIW-8500DV?

I'm only a moderate gamer (e.g. flight sims) so that card has been fast enough for 2 years now. The video features have been good enough for general NTSC analog capture use. I use the Canopus ADVC-100 for DV centric captures. Both will continue to be useful for years.

[lordsmurf]

The most stable release of ATI MMC is 8.7
That would work great on the 8500 card.

I have also used 9.02 with great success.

I would especially avoid 8.0, 8.8, 8.9, and 9.03
And then all of the 7.x series is too old.

For older cards (non-RADEONS) you are forced to use 7.x and then 7.7 is most stable of those. Most of the early 7.x series is UNFIT for DVD work.

It should also be pointed out the 8500DV is probably the most problematic card of the series. If possible, disable the "DV" ports.

[edDV]

I disabled the DV port the day I got the card. The problems were known by then. Also, I've had no issues with the tuner hardware. They must have fixed the early problems in the second production run.

I'm on 8.7 now but will be rebuilding windows shortly.

So do you reccommend I go to 9.x (9.02 is current no?) or stay away? Any pro/con to that step?

ATI site says "Customers using older products (before 9xxx) should use Multimedia Center 9.02/ WDM 6.14.10.6246/ and CATALYST 4.10."

[lordsmurf]

ATI says a lot of nonsense.
9.03 is most current (BAD IDEA!)
I would stay on 8.7 unless you want MPEG4.

[edDV]

ATI says a lot of nonsense.
9.03 is most current (BAD IDEA!)
I would stay on 8.7 unless you want MPEG4.

Thanks, I've been burned by ATI so many times in the past.

[Ron B]

I agree with everybody, more or less. Love my AIW 9800Pro, but not a big fan of MMC, so I use VirtualDub and usually, huffyuv. An inexpensive TBC took care of any capture problems I was having. It's plenty good for my FlightSim games, but not a 3D blazer, that's not why I bought it. I don't think I've updated my Catalyst drivers for six months, no need to. You can get a seperate graphics card and capture card or device, but the price is going up.

[DragnFist]

I love the flexibility of the ATI MMC software, but if you don't want to mess with stuff then other software is simpler (and less powerful).

As LordSmurf pointed out, the ATI TV Wonder series does NOT use the ATI Theatre chip...HOWEVER, my research says that the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 *is* powered by the Theatre 200 chip, same as AIWs. I believe this will be my new capture card. I had a AIW 7500 which I loved dearly, but HalfLife2 is a no-go so I'm planning to split and get a NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT and the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0...so that I can upgrade the video and stay with current FPS games and not have to replace the capture. Price is only a bit more than an equivalent AIW card...comments welcome.

[lordsmurf]

If the BOX does not say THEATRE on it, at least from cards I've seen in the past, then it probably does NOT have the THEATRE chipset. There have been many false rumors online about what does and does not have Theatre. Be very careful, and be sure you can return the card, should it not work great.

VirtualDub works well with an ATI AIW card too, when doing AVI work.

[mpack]

Returning to the original question, I would recommend a single all in one card, rather than two cards.

My reason is video overlay (preview): you need this in order to see what you're doing during a video capture session. However, if you have two separate cards then to get overlays the video data has to cross the PCI bus from capture card to display card - which will use up a certain percentage of the available PCI bus time.

During actual video capture the video data has to cross the PCI bus twice, ie. to the display and to the hard disk. That is at least one too many crossings from my pov.

The trick to reliable video capture usually comes down to minimizing the amount of unnecessary work the PC has to do, hence I would go for a single card so that overlays don't need to use the PCI bus. In an ideal world that single card would also do audio captures too...

None of the above requires the single card to be made by ATI, but in fact the ATI AIW cards are the only combo cards I've used, and quite successfully.

Sorry, can't comment on ATI for gaming - not an interest of mine.

[anitract]

Lordsmurf,

Why do you not recommend 9.03? Bad captures? Instability?

[DragnFist]

If the BOX does not say THEATRE on it, at least from cards I've seen in the past, then it probably does NOT have the THEATRE chipset. There have been many false rumors online about what does and does not have Theatre. Be very careful, and be sure you can return the card, should it not work great.

www.ati.com says: "The value packed TV WONDER USB 2.0 makes full use of today’s advanced ATI Theater 200 technology and USB 2.0 bus standard to deliver exceptional TV and video quality to the PC at a very affordable price. The USB 2.0 standard is 40 times faster than its USB 1.1 predecessor, so it can transfer raw, uncompressed video directly to your computer. As a result of the TV WONDER USB 2.0 utilizing the ATI Theater 200 technology the dramatically improved video displayed with the TV WONDER USB 2.0 is exactly the signal you received without the compression distortion inherent in the old USB 1.1 products." (my bolding)

I haven't found pics of the back of the box but I can confirm that the front doesn't say Theatre...but given the above I would think ATI is lying through it's teeth if it doesn't have a Theatre 200. Note that the other TV Wonder cards don't mention Theatre anywhere in the literature.

I do need to capture once in a while, but I don't run anything else while I capture so if video overlay uses a bit more CPU that won't bother me (and the USB will pump up the CPU usage as well). As long as it will do a good capture on an Athlon64 3200+, nForce4 Ultra mobo, 1 gig of DDR PC3200+ RAM, WD Raptor 74gig and an NVIDIA 6600GT with nothing else running during the capture session then it will suit my needs. I'll wait to play my games at another time. Do you think I would have any problems with this setup given my needs?