AIW Radeon, What a disappointment!

F

fquan

New member
Heard all the rave about the AIW Radeon, sold my system. Spend C$4K on a new system, used the on-board video on my CUSL2 and waited a month for this card to be released. Now that I finally have one, I am regretting it already. My old system with the Fury & ATI-TV is a better multimedia PC. With this new card, I can not play DVDs or VCDs. Get a black screen (no picture or sound), but DVD player is playing. Can not watch VCDs, cause does not support the VideoCD 2.0 format. TV player, picture quality is not as good as the ATI-TV. I could do ALL that with the older Fury & ATI-TV, best of all I didn't have to shell out C$4K. I might go back to the Fury & ATI-TV setup until there are more mature drivers for the MMC 7.0.
 
Please post your specific hardware and operating system. Just maybe all or most of your problems can be fixed, just give us a chance to respond.
 
Thanks for responding. I love the card and I use nothing but ATI cards for the past ten years. Just feel that lately they are releasing products with immature drivers/MMC software.

My hardware:
CUSL2 w/Intel 733Mhz
Win98
128MB PC133
AIW Radeon w/3056 driver & MMC 7.0
SB Live value w/Liveware 2.0
3COM 3C900XL NIC
USR 56K V.90 external V/F modem
Toshiba DVD SD-M1202
HP CD-Writer+ 7200
IBM 45GB UltraATA100 7200
Maxtor 40GB UltraATA66 7200
SONY 19" E400
FPS-2000 digital speakers

The AIW Radeon installed no problem, but the install CD did NOT copy (tried un-install & re-install three times, same thing) the file "DFC42.DLL" to "C:\Program files\ATI Multimedia\Main", this causes the ATIMMC.EXE & Launchpd.EXE not able to run. Once I manually copy this file to that folder, that solved the problem. I can open DVD, VideoCD, TV, AudioCD, File Player, no problem what so ever. Actually the only problem I have is with the DVD player, "BLACK screen" no picture or sound, DVD player buttons greyed out, but DVD is playing (DVD-ROM accessing led lights), try to close ATI DVD player, would get three error messages (ATIMMC have performed an illegal operation) before it closes. Thsi is with the "007 The world id not enough" DVD. But the ATI DVD player works on my DVDs with "no zones", like Episode 1 The Phantom Menace.
The VCD issue, its because it does NOT support VideoCD 2.0 format, ATI stated that on their manual, what a bummer, ATI MMC6.X supported it.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions, cause I would love to keep this card.
 
Well, I had major problems with my Radeon AIW until I installed the beta drivers. The tricky thing is getting them installed correctly.

Uninstall the "older" drivers in add remove programs. Then after a reboot, install the new beta ones. Then go into device manager and check all of your ATI devices under "Sound, video and game controlers" make sure that the drivers are dated around 8-30-00. If not, manually update them.

This was my problem. I have not had a problem with the new betas
 
OK but drivers will not fix the very poor picture quality of the radeon aiw tuner. I had another tv software program that looks great but this aiw is soft and fuzzy.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. Installed the special drivers (drivers are all dated around 8-30-00), but still the same - NO improvement.
Yes, the TV picture is more fuzzy in full screen. But in 640x480, its perfectly acceptable.
 
The new 'Rage Theater' chip, that is all the rage right now (pun intended), is in fact inferior to the older Conexion chip used on the ATI TV Wonder and the ATI All In Wonder 128 16 MB and previous cards. Why they decided to use this new chip, I don't know? When compressing recorded television programs into MPEG-4 format the output from the Rage Theater chip results in severe corruption in black or dark areas of the screen. The older chip does not have these problems.

If you are really serious about having good VI capability, I suggest you get an ATI All In Wonder 128 PCI (it works better than the TV Wonder) and just get a Radeon 32 AGP.
 
Note that the All In Wonder 128 32 MB does use 'Rage Theater', so avoid it! And I have done extensive testing comparing the All In Wonder 128 16 MB to the 32 MB, the only difference being the different capture chips and the 16 MB has better capture quality hands down!
 
Does the ati-tv wonder work with the radeon 32ddr? I also had bad experiences with the rage theater chip in my old rage fury pro. My old matrox rainbow runner had a much better picture for capturing still shots. I was using s-video in with the matrox and only composite-in with the rage fury pro. I would like to get separate capture card to that I am not held captive to expensive video cards and can thus probably upgrade the video card more often.
How does the ati-tv wonder compare to other capture boards?
 
I though perhaps it could be my older Toshiba DVD drive, firmware not able to read dual layer DVDs. Updated the firmware on my DVD drive with dual layer capable firmware, but still no luck. Still no picture or sound on the ATI DVD payer. Noticed almost ALL buttons on my ATI player are "greyed out". Could it just be the poorly done "ATI install CD" just did not install the MMC 7.0 properly. Cause none of the multimedia components would work at first. Keeps on complaining about a missing link. Had to manually copy the "MFC42.DLL" file to the "C:\program files\Ati multimedia\main" before those components would even run. So I am hoping its just because ATI is rushing out this product and screwed up on the MMC 7.0 install. Perhaps I'll try to get ATI to ship me another install CD.
 
Where did you get the firmware for your toshiba drive? I have the scsi sdm1201 and can't find any firmware on toshiba's site.
Thanks.
 
The reason why TV looks a bit blurrier now is because ATI's using a DirectShow filter. The old ATI-TV/AIW128 16mb allowed you to configure the screen for interlaced, one field, or both fields. With the Rage Theatre, it's always "both" but it's done at a higher quality. So while it may not seem as sharp as an interlaced picture, you do avoid the feathering artifacts.

I have found that the capture is actually cleaner than the old Brooktree chips... maybe it's just the source?

Alan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top