ATI TV Wonder 550 Supported?

[beyonder74]

I purchased an ATI TV Wonder 550 from Buy.com last week when they were running a special. I paid around $46 to have it shipped to the house using Google Checkout to get $10 off . I was going to return the card even before it arrived because I thought it did not have mpeg-2 hardware encoding. When the box arrived it says it has hardware encoding. Is this similar to the Theater Pro 550 that shows as supported? Will this card work with GBPVR? If so, does it work as well as the Hauppauge PVR-150? Are there any issues I should know about before opening this unit? The box also shows an offer for a "Free Remote". I am not sure which remote they offer.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[sub]

Yes, it should work fine with GB-PVR. The ATI 550 cards are fairly common, and widely used.

I'm not sure which remote it comes with, so I dont know for sure if that'll work. If its the ATI Remote Wonder, then yes, you can get that to work also.

[beyonder74]

Wow, super fast reply. I really thought I had made a mistake. The price was right and I jumped on it. I am going to work on this next week. I have an older PIII 1GHz with 1 GB RAM. I need to figure out which hard drives I am going to throw in it. I have Windows 2000 or Server 2003 that I am going to configure with it.

Thanks!

[Ted the Penguin]

I suggest 2000, its a bit lighter weight, and that may matter if you are running on a PIII. my question is how did you get a PIII board to recognize 1GB of ram?

[beyonder74]

I will have to check what I have in there. I dont remember the motherboard or which combination of memory I have in there. I know it was tight to get in the stick closest to the CPU and fan. The memory seats in the slot, but is at an angle at the top. When I install the card, I will post the specs of my system.

[fender]

I suggest 2000, its a bit lighter weight, and that may matter if you are running on a PIII. my question is how did you get a PIII board to recognize 1GB of ram?

There are a lot of P3 motherboards that recognize 1gb+ of ram. That just means he isn't using an Intel i810 or i815/E based chipset.

[beyonder74]

It is (was!) an Asus P3V4X motherboard with a VIA chipset. I actually had 1.25 GB of RAM in it. It is the old PC100/133 memory across 4 sticks. I spent all morning installing win 2000 and patching and updating and rebooting (...and rebooting...) I went to go install my sound card and I forgot to unplug the power and I smoked something. I dont think I am going to find a replacement motherboard. Now I might install it in my main PC running XP, but not sure about it. I have some old P4 chips laying around but it looks like new Socket 478 boards use DDR memory. I really didnt want to spend more than the capture card to get it working.

If anyone wants to donate a PIII motherboard that takes a Slot 1 Processor, I would gladly take it off your hands. Otherwise, I might sell of the parts I have left from this old box to help pay for something new.

This is a disappointing end to what I though was going to be a fun project.

[fender]

Ah, yes. I've owned many a P3V4X motherboard. The the Via 694D era. I still have a Tyan Tiger133 (dual slot-1) using that very chipset handling some PHP rendering duties here.

The chipset is quite stable as long as you don't attempt to use a Live! soundcard with it in Windows last I checked (runs linux great).

[Tepabajo]

I purchased an ATI TV Wonder 550 from Buy.com last week when they were running a special. I paid around $46 to have it shipped to the house using Google Checkout to get $10 off . I was going to return the card even before it arrived because I thought it did not have mpeg-2 hardware encoding. When the box arrived it says it has hardware encoding. Is this similar to the Theater Pro 550 that shows as supported?Thanks.

I would like to answer this question for you and others that may come accross this post. ATI is confusing with their marketing and such. Your ATI TV Wonder 550 (tuner card) uses the Theater Pro 550 (chip) on the board.

Cheers

[wolly6973]

I was wondering how to tell the difference between the TV Wonder 550 and the Theater Pro 550. I just bought what I thought was a Theater 550 pro on ebay, but I am having a terrible time installing it. Is it possible that it is really the TV Wonder 550? Thanks