VisionTek AIW HD PCIe (All-In-Wonder Junkie needs help)

[kayphoonstar]

Okay, so I've looked around here a bit before asking about this card and haven't seen much about them. I'm in USA using Comcast Digital Cable on an XPPro SP3 machine, MSI MB W/AMD 64 X2 6000+

I've used All in Wonders for quite a few years and have always liked them despite their driver quirks. Vista killed the old AIW's and GBPvr needs the software encoder plugin so I'd kind of given up.

Anyway, I've settled into a very comfortable setup with GBPvr (It is THE program and way more stable than BeyondTV or any of the others I've tried - in my experience) and have a working HVR1600, a Kworld 115 ATSC and a WinTV USB . Never being satisfied or comfortable with being comfortable, I picked up one of these All-In-Wonder HD PCIe cards on sale at Best Buy thinking that with the 650 pro chip would work fine with GBPvr and I could get back to using All In Wonders. I didn't read enough of the fine print that said the QAM on these is only being supported in Vista Media Center. But who wants to read all that fine print?

So, I put in the card, installed the drivers that came with it, as well as the Catalyst Media Center and went straight into GBPvr Config. Digital Plugin showed ATI 650 PRO (ATSC & QAM). I tried both and hit Blue Screens. So I went to the Catalyst Media Center (No QAM option) and scanned and got several OTA Digital Channels.

I downloaded the latest ATI drivers (9.2 packages) still no luck in GBPvr. So I backed up and re-installed a clean GBPvr (1.311) and added the patches from the survivor's guide. That kept the dreaded Blue Screen away but still locked up Config when I tried Scanning.

So THEN I opened up Total Media 3 that came with a Kworld card and picked the 'ATI BDA Digital Tuner'. It then gave me the option for Cable or Antenna. Choosing Cable, TM3 found about 130 (2/3 were locked) QAM Channels and seems to function very well moving from channel to channel, w/clean picture and sound. So the drivers are working and the card seems to have Clear QAM tuning capabilities in XP. Now I REALLY don't want to give up on getting this to work since I know it WILL work - somehow - maybe.

BTW, I did try copying some of the QAM tuning settings from the Kworld 115 to the EPG settings of the AIW w/o scanning for channels but I got nothing - just black screen.

So, I'm really hoping someone give me some ideas what to try next to get this working. The Analog cable input option works just fine in GBPvr. But comcast's Straight cable selection just got cut back to only a few channels and the Clear QAMs are way better. I just need something to point me in the right direction. I don't really have any ideas about what to check or adjust in GBPvr to get the card to play nicely.

The card itself only has 3 connectors: HDMI, DVI, (Output) and a Coax input for capture. It's in a PCIe slot, not PCI or AGP. There's also a daughtercard that has Svideo and Audio input as well as Component and Svideo output. So, from what I gather, this is different from the various flavors of the ATI HD capture cards that are out there. But as I said, the chip is the 650 Pro.

Anybody got any ideas about what direction to go next? Or anybody have QAM working in XP w/one of these?

[kayphoonstar]

Well, I got no answer about anyone else using this card, but I thought I should post a follow-up:

I did a full cleanup of all of the ATI drivers and all ATI registry entries and installed the latest (9.3) package that came out yesterday. The saga of troublesome ATI/Third Party drivers continues, IMHO, as the Visiontek driver CD that came with the card seemed to completely trash my net.Framework 2.0 installation.

Anyway, with those new drivers (no catalyst media center) scanning for digital channels still bluescreens the computer. *HOWEVER*, copying the scanned channels from the Kworld 115 configuration works just fine now. It takes a bit to come up and it may have been that I didn't wait long enough before giving up on my earlier attempts - and before I cleaned up the ATI driver install (which needed to be done anyway. . .)

I also took a stab at using both the analog and digital capture at the same time but I needed a reboot to get the capture functions back after that, so I would say that just doesn't work. . .

I still haven't tried the card in Vista. I'll be interested to see if scanning works smoothly on a different machine and OS. BTW, I'd still like to hear from anyone who has any ideas as to why the scanning crashes the computer, but tuning the channels manually works just fine - and if there's anything I can do to solve that. I should also note that the Kworld scanning seemed a bit more stable after the old driver cleanup so there may be some other driver conflict in my setup.

Bottom line: I got this card for $100 plus shipping and at that price, I'm not at all unhappy. But it really doesn't have the input flexibility of the older cards. On the other hand, having hardware based encoding is a pretty nice improvement from older cards. And the HDMI output may come in handy. . .

All submitted fwiw.

[kayphoonstar]

Well, I'm still hoping that I'll get some ideas on what can be done to get this AIW working as I want it to. The setup in XP seems to be working fine after copying the channel settings from another card's QAM scan.

I put the card into a new Vista install on another box last weekend and the results were a bit more disappointing - but the thing seems to work precisely as advertised - that is, No QAM anywhere but in the included Catalyst Media Center. That just seems weird to me.

When scanning for channels in GBPvr it doesn't crash but it also doesn't find any channels. The scan goes very quickly but nothing shows up. Also, in Vista, unlike XP, Total Media 3 says the card "is in use, please close any programs that may be using this card," so no scanning can take place - but the ATI BDA filter is there. I also don't seem to be able to add channels manually as I could in XP.

FWIW, my situation kind of sounds more like what people have experienced with the 650 Pro chip in general while trying to get QAM working in Vista. It seems like the driver may be the issue and I might trying going back to some older ATI drivers when I have time. I'll post any resolutions I find - if I find them. In the meantime, though, If anyone has any luck with getting QAM in GBPvr out of this card, let me know!

[sub]

Unfortunately when it comes to QAM, this isnt covered by the BDA specification, so each manufacturer implemented their own proprietary way of doing. I added QAM support for the Hauppauge, HDHomeRun, OnAirGT, and Vixs devices, allowing these to be used for QAM tuning in the app. Some people have been lucky and managed to get other manufactures devices to do QAM, because those manufacturers had implemented their method close enough to how Hauppauge had done it.

Basically QAM is a bit hit or miss on other manufacturers devices, so where possible I recommend people stick with Hauppauge devices if they want to be sure it'll work.

[kayphoonstar]

Yeah, my novice guess here is that the issue in Vista may change based on driver version but I haven't messed with it yet. The analog side works fine but I've already got the HVR 1600 doing QAM and capturing off the STB on the Vista Machine already. At least in works in XP. . . and as I said above, the price was right.

[PsycoGeek]

Kaphoonstar, i sure would like to get ahold of your tuning list you have.

it was a long time ago that i messed with this stuff, its on the "other" computer, the user now has STILL chosen GBPVR over the ati media garbage , even though they can run either one at thier will. i wouldnt even know where anything belongs anymore, so if you could lead me by the nose :-) i might be able to figure out how to do what you did.

they just dont have the FEW local HD channels that come for free over the comcast. right now were not BUYING the $$$$ whole hd package anyways. so the user has been mostly ok with the lesser configuration.
also the CPU consumption during digital is a lot higher , so it not working is again not a big problem, but i sure would like to SEE it again, its was soo cool.

[kayphoonstar]

PsycoGeek, you need to get hold of another QAM card (one that *can* scan channels) in order to do what I did. Once you hit the "Map EPG channels" and get the list of available QAM channels - you get something for each channel found that looks like this:

T:64,0,0~P:203~V:2112~A:2113~PMT:50~PCR:8191~E:T~N:>64.203 Unknown2 (000(AC3))

In the above case, it maps to Animal Planet on Channel 43 of the EPG. So once I have this info I can copy it into the EPG listings of any other QAM card (Like the errant AIW) and voila! Reception without the scan.

The deal with Comcast here is that they've just gone to digital only on most of the good basic cable channels so the only way (without using an STB) to get TLC or History or MSNBC or CNN is with a QAM tuner. So being able to get those channels (SD only) is an added plus to the HD local Channels.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need more guidance.

[kayphoonstar]

I think this will be the final word on my experience with this card. I started over in Vista with a clean install and this time, installed the fabled "TV Pack" that enables QAM and more than two tuners in Vista Media Center.

With a clean install of GBPVR and no other drivers or codec installed beyond the ATI Vista drivers, the issue remained the same, that is, no scanned Channels from the ATI. With the 3 patches, the scan errors out with a Net Framework 2.0 error. Trying the "cut & paste" approach to channels, the ATI card can't find the signal.

I didn't investigate, but for some reason the HVR1600 did not work for QAM in this new install - trying both the 3.4 and 4.6 cd version drivers. My Kworld 110 worked fine.

So then I tried out the Vista Media Center and, interestingly enough, the ATI QAM was the first and preferred device when VMC analyzed the TV signals, scanned and found all the named (local) channels. When I added other known QAM channels it had no problem tuning them. I find this fascinating.

Now, there are numerous reasons that I won't go into in this forum as to why I wouldn't want to try to use the QAM out of VMC and I've gone back to the previous install where the Kworld 110 and HVR 1600 pickup plenty of QAM and the analog side of the HVR1600 records off of the STB (SVideo). Since QAM off the ATI AIW works in XP that's where it stays. It seems pretty obvious to me that the ATI driver is the problem. They have their Catalyst Media Center (to claim Vista QAM support) and OEM support for Vista w/the new TV Pack and that's all they have focused on. And perhaps that's all they'll do.

I dunno. But if' I'd paid $200 instead of $100, I'd be pretty irritated.

And this ends the saga of my ATI AIW and QAM!

[milindn]

kayphoonstar -
Looks like I am in the same boat, but I am having a difficult time getting VMC to even recognize the card. It only catches the analog tuner, but Comcast in our area does QAM in only Digital and in HRC frequencies. Its driving me nuts cause nothing seems to work. Any help would be appriciated.