How many of u have givin up on MMC / Guide?

[fanbanlo]

How many of you have givin up?

[noodles]

I have a TV Wonder Elite.

I've given up on MMC, Guide+ and many other things.
- MMC hard locks my PC after watching or recording for a variable amount of time.
- Guide+ is not very nice to use (ugly) and keeps opening the TV window in a seperate windows (not the one in the top corner) and so it's very annoying.
- I've tried GB-PVR. It works ok except TV listings from Zap2It don't work (very rarely does it work) and I want GB-PVR to work in a smaller-than-fullscreen window so I can do other things on the computer while the TV plays.
- To top it off, I only have one cable feed coming to my computer and the line levels are so low that if I put a splitter to feed my cable modem and my TV tuner then the cable modem cuts out half the time. So I can't even get cable to the computer.

*sigh*

[Agustus]

I too have a Theater 550 Pro based card, two actually, and was aware of the lack of MMC support before buying. Therefore, I wouldn’t exactly call it “giving up” but rather “moving on”.

My first TV tuner card was made by Hauppauge and I honestly disliked the bundled WinTV2000 application. This spurred on the pursuit for better third party software. Furthermore, I have come to view most if not all bounded software as being little more then inferior demo or quasi trialware products designed to placate those who are unaware, cannot afford or are unwilling to buy better software.

Case and point:

The Visiontek Xtasy Theater 550 Pro cames with Snapstream BeyondTV SE 3.7.x + BeyondMedia 1.0.0. Many people will praise BTV and other Snapstream software. Indeed, I agree that BTV is really quite good software. However, BTV SE is deliberately hobbled by only allowing 30 days of what they call free EPG listings after which you must pick a payment method to continue using listings from Snapstream. Again many people will agree that BTV and any other PVR application is useless without an EPG, therefore, BTV SE has been rendered useless (or quasi useless) unless you pay up.

I’m currently using MCE 2K5, which I prefer to BTV so I only played with my copy of BTV SE for a few weeks and then shelved it.

The full version of BTV allows for XMLTV listings and I was 100% to 110% sure I could force BTV SE 3.7.x to use XMLTV listings as well.

Although, I am contented with MCE 2K5 I have found some bugs but nothing serious.

I’ll probably buy at least one copy of Windows Vista (Home Premium or Ultimate with Vista MCE) next year (if not delayed again) but before that I might get around to playing with the BTV4 demo.

BTW, I used “Media Portal” on my T550P for a little while and I really liked it. “Media Portal”, at times, can be a reasonable facsimile of MCE.

So yeah, I “moved on” and will likely continue to “move on”.

[chhreese]

I'm still currently using it because I haven't taken the time yet to try something else, but I've given up hope that it will ever get better. I kept trying the new updates with high hopes, but after a few years of failures, I'm not going to try again. And if the situation does not improve, I think I might give up on ATI hardware for awhile. Try somebody else.

[mikiem]

Never really used Guide, but then only used aiw's for capture. For that use MMC to cap mpg2 at bitrate of 20 -- reason I bought 2nd aiw last year (haven't found anything else that comes close to bitrate).

But new wdm for mmc 9.13 only gives half height vid from aiw 9600, so is unusable. If that isn't fixed when older drivers stop working (guess probably when MS starts moving Vista graphics/display code into XP), I'll probably move on to different methods/hardware.

[rtwaits]

I dont use the GuidePlus directly, but rely on it to tell me what's on when I surf in Eazylook. That gets disabled when you disable TVoD with the registry hack. I really wanted to get MCE 2005 to work well, but I felt the quality suffered.

There seem to be too few software choices out there for software-encoding cards like the AIW. Since I use all of mine for the advantage of TV output, I felt it redundant to buy a separate hardware encoding card (like the Theater 550). Perhaps that was a bad choice on my part - too cheap!

[jroal]

I gave up on 9.13 working with guide but 9.06 works fine with it.

[gtrz]

I've given up to the extent that I have zero notion of ever upgrading my cats or
MMC with my current hardware, which I still plan on using for quite some time as it does what I need it to do. I don't play computer games so no big deal there.
Things work pretty well right now, I'm not complaining really just as long as I stick with MMC 9.08, cat 5.x with analog audio, rw3.03, and even Guideplus 1.0.0.53 works quite a bit of the time as long as getting the weekly file works and I don't get the checksum error, and the punctuation is removed from the scheduler it pretty much works. I'd say Guideplus is the biggest issue of any now. I will not EVER buy an AIW solution again as things have changed too much. Going forward it will be a non ATI capture tv card with no built in macro protection along with the pcie video of my choice, whatever that may be at the time.

I have the latest Media Portal beta installed but I'm afraid I'm not quite bright enough to get the whole enchilada working yet, and from what I've gathered so far from their forums (and I haven't spent much time on this yet) that people are recomending to use the digital audio NSP with the program for the newer builds, but I don't want to use them. If anyone could help me get the tv etc. set up in Media Portal I'd be much obliged if they could p.m. me some info..

[lewdvig]

I had some bad luck with AIW 9800 and X800 cards but the X1900 has worked right out of the box so far.

No crazy errors or crashes. TV works and gaming is OK.

[leadalto]

How many of you have givin up?

I've been using Guide+ with an AIW9800 Pro, Cat 5.2, MMC 9.03 for several years and have not had any problems scheduling and recording programs from cable. The only glitch that appears occasionally is when, after boot-up, the ATI Rage Theatre Video hardware is not detected. I always check to see if TV is working properly after boot-up. If not, I go to System Device Manager, Uninstall the Video hardware then let the system detect NEW hardware. It always detects the Video hardware and then everything is OK.

As far as I'm concerned, everything works fine with some minor anomolies that I work around and I will not be changing the software configuration, since it works, no matter what.

[Osirus]

Well i was just about to throw it out the window last night lol.

I ordered the NWA-TNA wrestling PPV and was going to record it onto my PC

Well i was getting it set up and was getting angry with it, the delay is horrible trying to navigate menus and guides on my dish, and the 1 touch record thing is crap SO trying to figure out how to get rid of the "record for 30 mins" thing i got PO'ed at it and tried to roll back to an earlier version of MMC

well that just caused th TV failed to start error.
So i checked the remote wonder drivers and other drivers, uddater eveything else and no go.

FIne i used the unisall everything ATI thing and reinstalled the card MMS, updated it to the newest drivers. MMC ect.
Horrible delay ect again,t hen it crashed and after that wouldnt open got the "ATI MMC.exe has caused an eroor and needs to close "

reinstaled the MMS and rebooted

then eveytime it booted up it would freeze and give me the BSOD (got auto reboot turned off)
but the graphics were all screwy on the BSOD and couldnt read what file was causing it.
So i went into safe mode and tried to uninstall ATI again, well it turns out you cant use that in safe mode...

Well i was pissed cause the PPV was half over by then lol.

So i reformatted C, reinstalled windows and the card.
Stuck with a really old MMC (one thats on my ATI Disc (TV version 8.5)
And the old version works AMAZING! No delay at all everthing works great and dast runs smooth ( new versions were choppy alot of the time)

So im sticking with the old MMC for now.
Its renewed my hope in my AIW card lol

[Someotherdude]

I have a tv wonder pro that I still use MMC 8.2 for just watching on a desktop. It's got some features like Thruview window & desktop, and browser tv that are great for watching while doing something else.

But for recording, I use Sage TV and theater 550 pro cards.

[Agustus]

Around the time the AIW X800XL came out I had calculated that the price difference between an X800XL PCIe card + Theater 550 Pro would be similarly priced. There wasn’t any PCIe AIW cards at the time either if I recall correctly (the AIW X800XL was AGP only) and I needed a PCIe card so I went for the X800XL PCIe + T550P since there was no noteworthy penalty for doing so (no MMC support but I didn’t have much of a problem with that). I have since upgraded my video card to a Sapphire X800GTO2 and unlocked/OCed it to X850XT PE spec and beyond. I also have tentative plans to upgrade the video card again as soon as DX10 and Vista based cards become available but the current generation of 7900GT(X) and X1900xxx class cards are quite attractive IMO.

The AIW line needs a push in the right direction and is in need of an updated hardware profile IMO.

As for MMC, one would think that it is in for a redesign once Vista comes out but not necessarily for XP. Still, I think a lot of people would be happy if ATI just made a deal with a software company like Snapstream to slap an ATI logo on BeyondTV and call it a day.

[hitrack]

I given up on any more experimenting. Cat 6.2 and MMC 9.061 are it for me. MMC 9.061 won't operate correctly with anything above cat 6.2, and I'm not using any MMC where TOD is always enabled.

Once Vista hits next January and I contemplate some hardware upgrades I will demote my x800xt to a HTPC and purchase a straight video card only suitable for playing the latest games, but nothing to do with AIW's.

[Rayder]

GuidePlus works for me, it's wonkadelic, but it works. As far as MMC....I just stick with an older version that actually works (9.06). Any newer revisions either stutter or just plain don't work right.

But I can understand the dilemma owners of newer AIW cards may feel. I'd imagine older versions of MMC don't work on newer cards?

Anyway, I voted no. I haven't "given up", so much as settled on what "just works".

But I don't plan to ever buy another AIW card. MMC just keeps getting worse with every revision. Why is that happening? How is that happening?

I've been hearing about how there are secondary cards that are much better for tuner functions. Some don't even THINK about macrovision. ;-)

I'll just buy a gamer video card and use a secondary TV tuner for video stuff after these AIW's we have are totally obsolete.

Hmm....should I have voted yes?

[lewdvig]

For $40 you could be so happy with your AIW - try BeyondTV.

If you are too cheap, try YahooTV (free).

[gtrz]

YahooTV doesn't support AIW'ers so I would NOT recomend that.

[yukit]

I have stopped using the TV tuner in my AIW & ATI Wonder since I got a Tivo.
I still need to use the MMC for the video/audio input from Tivo. I just upgraded to the latest driver & MMC, but thinking about going back to the analog driver & MMC 9.03 or 9.06.

My ATI HDTV Wonder is in another system running with MCE2005.
I may try BeyondTV (I have an old version that came with a Nvidia Video card) or Meedio when I have nothing else to do.

I just noticed the Guide Plus is broken, but I have no idea how long it has been like that.
Yeah, I guess I have pretty much given up.

[krutknut]

Using Eazylook + xmltv

I am using ATI MMC with XMLTV because I think Eazylook is quite elegant, with Swedish TV listings, text TV, and time shift. (Can't use guide+ becasue I need Swedish TV listings and then I have to use XMLTV).

[kencl]

After all the negative press MMC gets around here, I'm giving up on it before I've ever install it. I have a new ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI waiting to be installed (next couple of days likely). This will be my first introduction to TV on my PC, so after looking at the alternatives, I'm going to go with MediaPortal as my first PVR software. It seems pretty stable from what I've read, has an active user forum, ongoing publicly available development (SVN access) and the possiblity that I can contribute a plug-in once I'm more familiar with it's operation. This last point I wouldn't have thought of as being significant had I not experienced how much it adds to the value and usefulness of FireFox.

[tagteam]

Well, I gave up on MMC and have started using CMC. The primary reason I dumped MMC is because I discovered that, although the application would generally start and run reasonably well for a period of time, it would not run for any appreciable length of time on my PCs without freezing completely (freezing as in "TV displaying a static image while sound is still playing"). This anomaly would occur randomly. I never really knew when TV was just going to stop displaying moving images. In some instances, it would be a few hours while in other instances it would be a few minutes. Regardless, I knew at some point I'd have to shut down and restart the application.

My decision to dump MMC was made even easier when I read (for the first time on this very board) that ATI (AMD) would no longer be releasing new versions of MMC; v9.16 would be the last. I found that somewhat disconcerting in the sense I read that as the manufacturer 'throwing in the towel' on the software (i.e., they recognized a lot of users were having issues which ATI didn't know how to fix or for which they didn't want to be bothered). Pathetic attitude, IMHO,.......'since we can't get it to work reliably, why don't we just stop trying?'. Geez!

So, recently, I installed CMC and that's been working but it's really nothing special. I had been using MCE (the 2004 version) for a few years with AIW cards and my level of frustration has neither increased nor decreased. I found MCE to be fairly bug-ridden, resource hungry, and slow. Thus far, CMC is providing me with just about the same experience. I do, however, prefer using the RW over the MCE remote. I was never able to get used to having to point my MCE remote (being IR) in the direction of my display.

Frankly, although I can understand the desire to record programs, I think that feature has created, and is still creating, many of problems.....problems I wouldn't have IF someone would design an application FOR ME; a person who ONLY wants to watch TV in a window on his computer display, has no intention of EVER recording anything, and has no need for any kind of an EPG.

[Keystone]

MMC did the job until I realised what I was missing. I too was using XMLTV, but have since long given up on MMC after the first six months of MCE 2005's release.

With power-state wake-ups and multi-user logons, MCE is rock-solid. Plus I get all that I desire with third party support such as remote-wonder configuration (RWKeyfactory), automatic commercial deletion (Showanalyzer + DVRMSToolbox) and compression (DVRMSToolbox).

[x-tech]

Although I have stopped using MMC on one machine, I have not given up on ATI. I'm still using CMC with my 650 and I'm quite happy with it. MMC still works beautifully on my AIW 9800 setup.

[MrNovi]

When I can get my AIW9600's to actually work (they keep running into the WDM drivers Error Code 10 problem) MMC8.8 and Cat 5.x works great. The only problems I have with Guide Plus is that in my area it skips about a dozen channels and now after the new DST fiasco, is an hour off. If ATI had left things alone I would continue to use them, but with the newer cards not working with the older drivers/MMC and running into more and more problems getting cards to work with Win2000 I'm moving on to something else.

ATI took a decent (thouhg not perfect) and usable product and turned it into something that just does not work.

[aloke]

I use WatchHDTV (for OTA broadcasts using HDTV Wonder) almost exclusively. Luckily, I mostly watch PBS and some shows on the Networks (like sports, The Office ...). The analog cable connected to my AIW9800 is being wasted.

[dlj9999]

Although I have stopped using MMC on one machine, I have not given up on ATI. I'm still using CMC with my 650 and I'm quite happy with it. MMC still works beautifully on my AIW 9800 setup.

What is CMC?

[x-tech]

Catalyst Media Center version 1.0. It's a re-badged version of Cyberlink's PowerCinema 4. Although it has a few more features than the parent, it doesn't have as many as MMC.

It installed perfectly and runs quite well on my system which is more than can be said about MMC.

With the addition of the leaked driver, I now have my AIW X1900 working in Vista and CMC version 2.0 (if and when it arrives should make the list complete).

[dlj9999]

I am using ATI MMC with XMLTV because I think Eazylook is quite elegant, with Swedish TV listings, text TV, and time shift. (Can't use guide+ becasue I need Swedish TV listings and then I have to use XMLTV).

How did you get XMLTV to work with MMC?

[cdahmedeh]

How did you get XMLTV to work with MMC?

Me too, I also want to know how to make XMLTV work with zap2it.

[krutknut]

I shouldn't post the same thing all over the place, so here is a link to my response about xmltv in eazylook:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?p=1334851067#post1334851067