Upgrading AIW but confused on options!

[Devdeep60]

I have an ATI AIW 9800 pro and am planning a PC upgrade including a new Motherboard.

Reason for AIW is Hi8 analogue tapes conversion. Do I go for a cheaper version of X series AIW or go with Pinnacle or Hauppauge product?

I was told that ATI AIW cards only have software encoding and I will be better off with hardware encoding card. I am in UK PAL region.

[lordsmurf]

ATI AIW is hybrid hardware/software method, which can be superior to hardware only, and will be superior to software only.

[kush]

Depending on your upgrade path, you could keep your current card if it still suits your purposes well..If you go S939 AMD A64 (or Opteron), and don't want to pay an arm and a leg for an upgraded PCIe AIW card, there's the AsRock ("budget" division of Asus) 939Dual-SATA2 - http://www.asrock.com/product/939Dual-SATA2.htm - runs appx $65...It has both AGP and PCIe slots, so you could use your old card until such time you feel the need to make the transition to PCIe..It overclocks pretty well, is fairly well optioned.. And it can make use of your existing 20 pin ATX power supply (assuming it's a quality unit and up to the task of A64 power req's), as opposed to the newer ATX v2.01 24 pin PSUs/motherboards now.

But, if you're even remotely into gaming, I'd just throw that card out the window and go PCIe.

[edit] Oh, and there's apparently a P4/S775 version of the hybrid board, but I'm not sure that I can recomment it..VIA chipsets suck (I'd take the ULI based S939 board over it anyday), nor have I read anything about the boards performance or anything as of yet.
http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-880Pro.htm

And both boards support dual-core CPU's, so if you say wanted to go DC with the money saved from not getting gfx/power, you could do it w/out totally breaking the bank.

[Fos]

buy the Theater 550. You will not have a/v sync problems.

[Devdeep60]

ATI AIW is hybrid hardware/software method, which can be superior to hardware only, and will be superior to software only.

I have read many of your posts and respect your opinion. Will I be better off going for an X series AIW if I stick to the ATI card? I do not use it for games.

[Richard_G]

If you don't use it for games, stick with what you've got. I'm still running an AIW Radeon 7500 because it gives me a picture on my monitor and captures whatever analogue stuff I want to capture. This is the third motherboard/CPU it's been used with too.

It ain't broke, don't try to fix it.