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AIW X1900 vs Tuner

F

Flayum

n00b
Joined
Dec 23, 2005
Messages
29
Simple Question: Which is better, the ATI AIW X1900 (this) or a TV Tuner (ex:this) + random $300 videocard (ex: this)?

Hard Answer: The PC ( w/ MCE2005) will be primarily for TV (and movies), as well as light gaming on a 1680x1050 screen. Quality and feature are paramount, as well as input connections for a gaming system (PS2, etc.). Although the obvious choice would be the TV Tuner + Videocard, the AIW offers some 'integrated options' (such as seeting the TV as the desktop, semitransparent) not available via the TV Tuner. So, with quality & feature in mind:

All in Wonder or TV Tuner?
 
good thing about sperate tuner is if you want to buy a new video card - go ahead.... u dont have the replace the entire video card

i say seperate tuner.
 
MrGuvernment said:
good thing about sperate tuner is if you want to buy a new video card - go ahead.... u dont have the replace the entire video card

i say seperate tuner.
Click to expand...
agreed
 
Well, for one thing the AIW has a software encoder, which definitely isn't preferrable these days. I've had two software encoding cards so far (9800Pro AIW and a Leadtek TV2000 Expert), and any time it was recording if another program started that needed alot of CPU cycles, the recording would crash. Other than that, the Leaktek worked pretty decently for the $25 or so that I spent on it, but the 9800 was absolutely horrible. Buggy software really killed the experience for me. Whether it was having audio not being synced with the video in recordings, or just random crashes for no particular reason, it really soured me on the whole AIW scene.

Finally, I bought a generic Asus hardware encoding card (for something like $30 on the forums) which I use with the free recording/watching/sheduling program GB-PVR, and all of a sudden I don't have any dropped frames, my audio and video are always synched in my recordings, and I can use other CPU-intensive programs while recording and not have to worry about the program crashing.

Just my $0.02.
 
MCE wants a hardware SD tuner to be the primary tuner. So, in order to get an HD tuner to be your main tuner, you have to do some modifications. I know there are fixes for ATI's HD Wonder, but I'm not sure there is anything for the particular HD tuner you linked above. So really, your best option is to have both.

Best case scenario:
Separate video card
Theater 550 dedicated SD tuner
Separate HD tuner

Second best:
AIW x1900
HD tuner

Worst case (may not work correctly):
Separate video card
HD tuner
 
I thought ATi's AIW - especially new one's, do all hardware based encoding? or is that only mpeg?
 
Well... I kinda miss-led with HD Tuner... I only need an SD one. I can't seem to find a good "Theatre 550" (or another chip with better quality) tuner to work with WMC05. I'm also concerned about how the picture will appear on my 1680x1050 screen...

Any suggestions are very welcome!
 
Something to be aware of with the ATI tuners is that some people are experiencing sound and video delays (anywhere from 0.5ms to 2s), rendering them useless for connecting game consoles.
 
Flayum said:
Well... I kinda miss-led with HD Tuner... I only need an SD one. I can't seem to find a good "Theatre 550" (or another chip with better quality) tuner to work with WMC05. I'm also concerned about how the picture will appear on my 1680x1050 screen...

Any suggestions are very welcome!
Click to expand...
The theater 550 was designed to work with MCE, and it provides some of the best IQ for SD TV.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127987&ATT=14-127-987&CMP=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r
If you really want something to look good though on your screen, an HD tuner and an OTA antenna would be sweet.
 
I would go with something like the MSI tuner above, but how do the 3rd party Theatre 550s compare to the original ATI TV Wonder Elite. Is the $50+ more worth it? Is there any differance in image quality between the ATI & 3rd Party cards at all?
 
Something to be aware of with the ATI tuners is that some people are experiencing sound and video delays (anywhere from 0.5ms to 2s), rendering them useless for connecting game consoles.
Click to expand...

Thank god my 550 isnt like that. I love this card.
 
Why the hell would anyone connect a game console to a TV tuner card? Recording game demos or something?? :confused:

My vote would be for either a Hauppauge tuner (PVR 150 or PVR500 if you want dual tuners) or a Theater 550 based tuner (any brand is fine, I've had two, the official ATI one and a Sapphire one and I couldn't tell the difference) The only reason the ATI 550 is more expensive is because it comes with a nicer RF remote than the other ones.
 
Sabrewulf165 said:
Why the hell would anyone connect a game console to a TV tuner card? Recording game demos or something?? :confused:
Click to expand...
Maybe because they very nice desktop LCDs and no room for a seperate TV, ala bedrooms and dorms.
 
Y2K SE said:
Maybe because they very nice desktop LCDs and no room for a seperate TV, ala bedrooms and dorms.
Click to expand...

That's still stupid. TV tuner cards aren't really made for that kind of thing, especially ones that use digital microtuners. You might be able to get away with it on a PVR150 since it uses a faster analogue tuner, but If you want to do that, you'd be better of buying a desktop LCD that has composite/svid/rgb connectors and connect the console directly. Seems like you'd get terrible input lag running a console through a tuner card.
 
Sabrewulf165 said:
That's still stupid. TV tuner cards aren't really made for that kind of thing, especially ones that use digital microtuners. You might be able to get away with it on a PVR150 since it uses a faster analogue tuner, but If you want to do that, you'd be better of buying a desktop LCD that has composite/svid/rgb connectors and connect the console directly. Seems like you'd get terrible input lag running a console through a tuner card.
Click to expand...
Yeah console through tuner card isn't a very good idea.
If you really want to do this, you could get some sort of video input converter that outputs to VGA.
 
My advice is to stay away from All In Wonder cards. Cat 6.4 uses a new WDM driver model that enforces DRM on everything. Users are complaining that they are not even able to back up home movies off of tape. As a AIW owner myself, I am done with them. The MMC software for them absolutely sucks and feels uncomplete and is riddle with bugs. My advice is to use a seperate tuner.
 
Met-AL said:
My advice is to stay away from All In Wonder cards. Cat 6.4 uses a new WDM driver model that enforces DRM on everything. Users are complaining that they are not even able to back up home movies off of tape. As a AIW owner myself, I am done with them. The MMC software for them absolutely sucks and feels uncomplete and is riddle with bugs. My advice is to use a seperate tuner.
Click to expand...
I felt the same way about MMC as you do, until the latest 9.13 version of MMC (I think that's the latest). It's been 100% stable for me, and I haven't encountered any bugs. 9.03 I think was the version that sucked.
 
jebo_4jc said:
I felt the same way about MMC as you do, until the latest 9.13 version of MMC (I think that's the latest). It's been 100% stable for me, and I haven't encountered any bugs. 9.03 I think was the version that sucked.
Click to expand...

I think it's different for some installs. I had the 9.08 MMC running smoothly, but after I installed 9.13 the scheduler wouldnt work, nor the GemStar guide. Doing all the steps including uninstalling, using the ATI software removing tool, DriverCleaner, registry hacking, etc, I could not get 9.08 to work after that...the schedular crashed as soon as I scheduled a recording. I was able to get the 9.06.1 to work in the end. The moral of my story is that I wasted an entire Saturday afternoon just because I upgraded a working install of MMC to the latest version. I guess I should have ghosted my hard disk before installing MMC :rolleyes:

I see over at the rage3d forums that 9.13 does not have live TV, but instead does the deal with timeshifting so it uses way more CPU than live would and the sound skips at times.

I am almost to the point if installing my $40 6yr old Hauppage WinTV-GO PCI card. It tunes faster, the sound does not skip when I change channels or do something else with my PC while watching TV, and the tuner software starts almost instantly.
 
Met-AL said:
I see over at the rage3d forums that 9.13 does not have live TV, but instead does the deal with timeshifting so it uses way more CPU than live would and the sound skips at times.
Click to expand...
Thank ATI for that one, they refuse to intergrate the 550 Pro chip into their AIW series even though it's a no brainer to do so. They believe your system should be powerful enough to do software encoding. :rolleyes:

So you're looking for a tuner? Right now the best ones out there are based on ATI's 550 Pro chip and thankfully ATI has finally updated the drivers enough so that it's a good tuner now. It doesn't much what the brand since they are all just a copy of the reference ATI design and performance exactly the same, the only difference is the extra that you get one being either a decent remote or the crappy version. I don't know, I don't much look to the extras for value, the software is always horrible and I'm going to be using something better anyways and the remotes are pretty basic (I would prefer to use the MCE remote myself).

So for the 550 cards the way I see it:
+ Good drivers now.
+ Lots of software support.
+ Great image quality (although it's alittle too soft for me).
And hardly any cons, I think they're the way to go right now for a single SD tuner card.

Hauppauge's PVR150 is worth considering but lately Hauppauge has really been slacking off on the driver quality and not to mention theres still a few driver related bugs that have dogged the cards since release (Hauppauge refuse to even acknowledge them). That doesn't meant they're not terrible and if you're using Linux then it hardly matters since those problems don't exist.

A word on MCE: Yes, for MCE you need to have an SD tuner installed before you can add an HD tuner. Under MCE HD tuning is just an add on, the programme was designed around SD tuning and still is. The version that will be intergrated into Vista corrects this. Also you can't use an AIW in MCE, MCE just doesn't work with it. ATI does have a hack on their site but it is unsupported by them and MS.

I will add that this is a problem with MCE only, other PVR apps don't much care and you are free to mix SD and HD tuners or even have a purely HD tuner setup.

Regardless it goes to say that I agree with everyone else, you'll do better with a seperate card and tuner if not only for the simple reason that a hardware based tuner will eat up less of your CPU then the tuner on a softencoder like the AIW cards.
 
Met-AL said:
My advice is to stay away from All In Wonder cards. Cat 6.4 uses a new WDM driver model that enforces DRM on everything. Users are complaining that they are not even able to back up home movies off of tape. As a AIW owner myself, I am done with them. The MMC software for them absolutely sucks and feels uncomplete and is riddle with bugs. My advice is to use a seperate tuner.
Click to expand...
Yes, the driver switch and inclusion of more DRM features is what has caused the most problems for people. It seems that ATI is going to keep down the DRM path.
 
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