TV Tuner Win XP ATI 650 software

C

Corvette

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 12, 2002
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I've seen a bunch of bad remarks about the ATI 650 tuner card software. How bad is it really and maybe some specifics because most of what I've read is very general bashing?

I'm using Windows XP Pro and the computer in my sig. Any reason not to go with the Diamond ATI 650 PCIe? The remote is advertised as WMC, I hope that means Win XP gets love too.

We do not pay for fancy HD cable and my roommate has an HD tuner card. The only channel we get is PBS in HD. Maybe one day I'd like to pay for those features, will the ATI 650 move there with me?

Thanks in advance.
 
The drivers work in XP, but the remote does not unless you have the media center edition. You must use Beyond TV, Cyberlink Powercinema or Arcsoft Totalmedia for the windows App because AMD/ATI does not support theater 650 cards with their ATI media center. This is just AMD selling out to microsoft and the DMCA at the expense of the consumer, you know, the people that actually buy their products. Sorry for the rant, but to get back to vista issues, CPU usage maxes out, at least in 64 bit basic, causing dropped frames and overheating. I think that it is a driver issue by the HDstream not being offloaded to the theater chip or the GPU for rendering and the CPU has to take up all of the slack. The remote works very well in Vista, in fact you have to have it installed to read clear QAM signals in Powercinema. No remote, no cable QAM256. I'm replying to this message so I have a hyperlink for my customer support feedback to AMD. I need to find some resolution for my Newegg review of the MSI Theater650.
Oh, by the way, look at the ATI pages and you may see a flash Ad for something called an "All-in-Wonder HD" from Visiontech and Diamond. Here it is:
http://ati.amd.com/products/aiwhd/index.html
 
Catalyst Media Center is a reskinned version of Cyberlink's PowerCinema.

When I first got a 650 card (shortly after their release, I guess that was late 2006?) I tried to use that software. It couldn't tune nearly as many broadcast ATSC channels as WatchHDTV or SageTV. It crashed frequently. Sometimes it just froze. Often playback on analog channels would stutter.

I think it is horrible, horrible software and isn't worth the time to even try using. If you don't have a copy of XP or Vista Media Center and don't want to pay for SageTV or BeyondTV I'd highly recommend checking out any number of free media center type applications that are available, such as GB-PVR or MediaPortal.
 
So Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800 seems to be the next choice. Bjorn3d said the software also blows. I'm guessing there's a better 3rd party software choice, like GB-PVR or MediaPortal?

There's also AVerMedia AVerTV Combo PCIe which specifies some kind of Media Center OS which I won't be buying soon.
 
Corvette said:
So Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800 seems to be the next choice. Bjorn3d said the software also blows. I'm guessing there's a better 3rd party software choice, like GB-PVR or MediaPortal?

There's also AVerMedia AVerTV Combo PCIe which specifies some kind of Media Center OS which I won't be buying soon.
Click to expand...

Universal rule: The software that comes with TV tuners is always going to be garbage. There are very few exceptions to this rule. nNEVER buy a TV and expect to use the bundled crap; always budget enough to buy a solid third party PVR app. This is one of the reasons why Vista is such a great buy for HTPC use, cause most flavors of it comes with VMC.
 
as one of the other posters noted, all included software is shit. Pinnacle's is shit, AverMedia is shit, Cyberlinks stuff that comes bundled with ATI tuners is shit. If you want a good EPG + transcoding capabilities + good UI from 2 ft. or 10 ft., and you're using Windows...look no further than BeyondTV from SnapStream Media.
 
http://store.snapstreamstore.com/btv-hvr1800.html

That's what I want. Any input welcome, like a better deal or similar products for a better price etc.

The remote deal says it ended last year, but when you add to cart it's still free. Also, they're pushing software to burn DVD's. Can I burn w/out that software, just outside of BTV? Any suggestions?
 
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