ATI WONDER best MPEG-2 capture card???

[alebertaz]

Which of them do a better job in mpeg-2 realtime encoding: ATI Wonder with THETRE chip series or HAuppauge PVR series?

[flemming kristiansen]

Hauppauge PVR series is by far superior to the ATI cards.

[lordsmurf]

Hauppauge PVR 250/350 and ATI AIW (Theatre) do equally well. The ATI software is far superior, however. The only way I have ever been able to beat the performance of those cards is with an Apex and JVC DVD recorder, as both used LSI chips. Nice stuff, all of it.

[mats.hogberg]

The reason I opted for Hauppage, is that it has hardware mpeg encoding, while ATI uses something they call "hardware assisted", IIRC, whatever that may mean. LordSmurf might be able to elaborate on the subject.

/Mats

[lordsmurf]

ATI hardware will improve as a CPU improves. Part of the overhead is handled in hardware, but some in software. Indeed, we have seen this happen at least 3-4 times in just the past 2 years, exactly as promised (VideoSoap, new encoding specs, etc).

[mats.hogberg]

ATI hardware will improve as a CPU improves

That sounds like black magic! "ATI software will improve", I take it?

/Mats

[lordsmurf]

Yeah, more or less. Keep in mind the ATI software has a relationship with the hardware. But, yeah... a lot of it is software side.

[flemming kristiansen]

Ati does software ENCODING and hardware DECODING. I have both an Ati All In Wonder card and a Hauppauge PVR 250 card. The Hauppage card makes far better captures than the Ati card, especially at low bitrates. Futhermore the Haauppauge card only requires a slow CPU (about 800 mhz) to make full resolution captures. The Ati card cannot do that without dropping loads of frames.

[Nelson37]

SFAIK, ATI is hardware-assisted, software-based for both encoding and decoding. An ATI tech guy told me it has "register buffers" on the card. He went into more explanation, that was about all I got out of the combination of technalese and taiwanese.

Basically, ATI uses the main CPU to do much of the work. As CPU gets faster, encodes get better. Compare the rate at which CPU speeds have increased to the pace of upgrades for the Hauppage chip. I saw the Hauppage 250 when I had an 800 Mhz, now I have an old 1700, and the 250 is still their best.

ATI on the 800 Mhz did not do well, 1000, 1200 were better, 1400Mhz was very good. More improvement with the 1700 Mhz.

The ATI also does AVI and now even Divx capture, just for extras.

[mats.hogberg]

In the end, there's only on thing that made me go for the Hauppage card: No matter what the computer does, it will capture exactly the same. I can encode an mpeg, I can burn a DVD, I can play Doom3 - it doesn't matter one single bit, as the PVR250 card minds its own business, and chugs along unperturbed.
If I hade a dedicated capture computer - all this wouldn't matter, but as I don't, I really appreciate this, and it comes as a great advantage. That software gets better (both by simply utilizing the increased power of the hardware, and that new hardware allows for new features in the software) as the hardware improves is no big news - I'd be surprised if it didn't...

/Mats

[alebertaz]

I tried AIW 128 with Theatre chip & Haupauge PVR-150....Ati do better capture both MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 formats...

[alebertaz]

I'm sorry I tried PVR-250...