Deminishing Video

[Old Scholl]

In 2003 I had a ATI TV-wonder PCI running on Win98 w/256 megs of ram on a 386, displaying on a 32 meg pci video card. Today I have a ATi TV Theater Pro 650 PCI running on WinXP w/4 megs(-1 meg in XP/get it back in WinXP 64) on a Tri-core AMD Phenon, displaying on a DDR3 PCIe Nvidia 9800GT. Without a question my hardware has been upgraded, but what I'm able to do as far as TV/Video Recording has deminishing 10 fold. By the time I had the old ATI card on a 486 (still before HD) I could record in every format. The TV would open a sidebar in Internet Explorer so I could watch it. At a click of a button the TV would transform to a Video Desktop.
Today I am unable to do any of those things. The ATI Theater Pro 650 only records in DVD format (mpeg2), and thats it. No other recording formats, no TV desktop, no Internet viewing. Can someone out there explain to me how this is progress?

[jagabo]

You can blame Microsoft. To get MCE certification the video capture device must have hardware MPEG encoding. So most of the capture card manufacturers have switched to hardware MPEG encoding chips that don't support raw video capture.

On the other hand, you can now use your computer for pretty much anything you want (defrag your hard drive, play 3d games, etc) while capturing in the background. You couldn't do that with your AIW without dropping frames.

[vhelp]

You may want to bump down to the older pci card to get those favorite features back. I know it sounds revert-ish, but its not that bad.

About a year or so ago I bought (prob) the last ATI TV Wonder Pro cards left on the assembly lines. Best Buy had one last one left on the shelf and (prob for nastalgia reasons) I picked it up. Anyway. When I connected to my (then) upgraded pc, with win xp sp2 I got pretty much everything you decribed except for the internet video since I don't do that and don't do internet on my win xp computer--its my video workstation.

What was nice about the tv wonder pro card was the destop video feature. By the way, that card did not feature the hardware mpeg. It was all software and real-time encoding. I still have the card, and its actually a very good card for capturing analog video: ie, vhs; laserdisc; cabletv; satelite tv, etc., (I use the winfast cap card for laserdisc) but I settled with my Pinnacle AV/DV Studio card bacause it did what I needed very well, and I still use it to this day

So, yeah, you may need to bump down a notch if those feature are can't-live-w/out and what-not.

-vhelp 5121

[Old Scholl]

Thanks guys. Well the Hunt for the older card is on

[JimmyS]

Hi Old School and all ViDEOHelpers,

I'm a long time reader of this very fine web site - and finally, a 1st time poster/new member.
I have gone through a similar process as you have. I went from an ATI ALL-IN-WONDER Radeon in my former system to an ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI card in my current system. I to, thought the new card had a lot of shortcomings from the older AIW setup. but after bit of hunting and fiddeling about, I found that the 650 card is quite capable.

It will capture in numerous formats when (and if) you can locate where to make them happen. By default, the only capture settings available are the three Good-Better-Best MPEG2 profiles. In order the get to the other available formats, you must create new profiles for them and to do so is not at all obvious within the Catalyst Media Center (CMC).

To make a new capture profile, click the TV item after starting CMC. Then select Settings in the left column. Select Recording Settings (right column). Select "Custom Profile" (left column). The profile list opens, then select "Create Profile". A new profile item will show in the right column. Press Enter and the setting choice for the new profile will show.

The left column will let you select the video, audio, or advanced settings windows, then clicking the drop-down arrows or typing directly in the various fields you can alter each profile as desired. I think once you see the available "Compression standards" that are available, you will be pleasently suprised. (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 - Divx and h264, WMV etc.). You cand create as many profiles as you may need.

Here is the icing on the proverbial cake though. Once you have captured some video using one of the current profiles, you can also transcode it (or any other video CMC will recognize) to any one of the other profiles in your list. The transcode process will utilize the hardware encoder on the card to accelerate the process wherever possible. I have done transcodes of full DVD quality video to 320x240 h264 ipod quality video and have seen frame rates of over 300 fps.

One other thing I have noticed though is that if you are capturing Hi-Def OTA broadcasts, Only the default good-better-best profiles will allow proper capture of that format. (I usually use "best" for Hi-Def).

The ATI CMC program can be a bit flaky at times. Make sure you keep the drivers etc. updated, as the stuff that came with the card on the CD was shaky at best.