ATI TV Wonder 650 Digital Issue

[jslane]

I just replaced my PVR-150 with an ATI 650. I upgraded GB-PVR to the newest version at the same time with the hopes that the card was supported. I was excited that it was, but have encountered an issue I can't resolve.

The analog portion of the card works great in GB-PVR, but I just get static when I switch to one of the digital stations. I get good digital channels in the ATI software, and the preview screen in the upper right hand corner shows an image when I map the digital channels to the EPG. The tuning request fields have tuning information in them once I complete the mapping process. I assume the 'enabled' block should be checked for the same channel number in the analog capture device settings as well as the digital capture device settings since the digital channel will be mapped into the corresponding position in the EPG of the analog capture device.

When performing the config of the capture devices, the preview screen shows that the digital portion of the card is available and operational with live video in the window, but when GB-PVR runs, I see only analog channels. I can select the mapped channels and the descriptor for the digital channel shows up correctly, but as I said, there is only static.

Please help.

[sub]

The analog portion of the card works great in GB-PVR, but I just get static when I switch to one of the digital stations

This shouldnt be possible. With digital its either picture or nothing, which makes me think you're actaully talking about an analog station. Reproduce the problem, then zip and attach the logs and I'll take a look.

[jslane]

Thanks for your very quick response. After sleeping on the problem, I realized the obviously stupid mistake I had made. I had checked enable in both the analog capture device's EPG and the digital capture device's EPG. I'm not sure if the analog source gets preference over the digital source, but I could never get a digital image. After toggling the enable to off in the analog EPG for every channel that had a digital tuning request, I receive each digital channel without issue.

[x2ego]

How do you like the 650? Is the image quality close to standard TV? Are you using your computer monitor or a larger panel TV? I need to narrow down my choices and the ATI 650 is one of them.

[Zato]

Yes, I'd really like to hear some opinions of this card's performance as well. Looking at getting one for my 2nd tuner. Just wish it came w/remote.

[jslane]

I replaced a Hauppauge PVR-150 that was doing well, but I ran out of PCI slots and was looking for a dual tuner solution that did HDTV. After initial install, I realized the Catalyst software was as worthless as everyone described it to be. It crashed after the third start up and at least every other time after. Fortunately, it works well and stable with GB-PVR. The picture quality on the analog side is the best I've seen on PC tuner so far. The overall noise in the picture was reduced and the color balance was better without being too contrasty. Since I'm running through a Barco 801 projector 110" 16x9, my image is a little softer than I had expected, but still amazing. On a 19" LCD monitor, the HD is razor sharp. The only annoyance I've experienced is when the card switches between analog and digital tuning. The delay is five seconds or more. If I lined my channels up better in GB-PVR, this wouldn't be as great an issue. I'm still trying to figure out how to get the Dolby Digital up and working as I'm still only passing sound out to the L and R stereo channels on known DD sources.

[JimF]

On the analog side, my ATI 650 exhibited a slight herringbone pattern on channels 35 and above. I could not get rid of it, so went back to my 550. Both have good analog otherwise, and I did not see a difference between them.

On the digital ATSC side, you need a good antenna. With a Yagi in my attic, I could get the two local stations about 6 miles away in a fairly direct line of site path. There are some stations 30 to 50 miles away that I can detect, but not view reliably due to picture breakup. So get a good antenna, with a preamplifier at the antenna if you have a long cable run, over maybe 50 feet or so.

FWIW: I will get a HDHomeRun for the ATSC and QAM side anyway, once the BDA drivers are straightened out.

[congenictv]

On the analog side, my ATI 650 exhibited a slight herringbone pattern on channels 35 and above. I could not get rid of it, so went back to my 550. Both have good analog otherwise, and I did not see a difference between them.

Out of curiosity, how cpu intensive is the ATI 650? I tried the WinT HVR950 and it needs at least pentium 4 2.8ghz or centrino 1.8ghz to produce a smooth hdtv picture.

[JimF]

Out of curiosity, how cpu intensive is the ATI 650?

No problem there. On my 2.4 GHz P4, it used only about 5% during analog recording, the same as my ATI 550 Pro. As I recall, it was even less recording ATSC digital, since it is not even doing any compression, only recording to disk.

I think the HVR-950 would be very low CPU usage too for ATSC digital recording, but I don't think it has hardware MPEG compression for the analog NTSC recording, so that is what would require the CPU power. And playback is another matter, since you have to decompress the MPEG recording, but that has nothing to do with the hardware used for recording.

[congenictv]

No problem there. On my 2.4 GHz P4, it used only about 5% during analog recording, the same as my ATI 550 Pro. As I recall, it was even less recording ATSC digital, since it is not even doing any compression, only recording to disk.

Of course, playback is another matter, since you have to decompress the MPEG recording, but that has nothing to do with the ATI 650. I expect the specs you recited were for playback, and would be the same whatever card you used for recording an MPEG file at comparable compression and bit rates.

Hmm i never thought of that... so mpeg-2 playback from atsc would require more processing power than a mpeg-2 file created with say PVR150?

But I notice that for the ATI HDTV WOnder for instance, the mininum system requirement is a 1.3ghz processor whereas this thing requires 2.2ghz-2.8ghz or 1.8 centrino.