All-In-Wonder Returns - AIW HD...

Too bad the Catalyst Media Center software just doesn't come close to things like SageTV, BeyondTV, Media Center, etc. Hopefully it'll be usable in them.

Edit: Oh, never mind, it does. Though like most cards I'd assume no ClearQAM in Vista Media Center like the HDhomerun. Also, pretty gimped for gaming, isn't it? Only 120 stream processors?
 
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Hmm... that must be what the tag at best buy that said AIW for 199.99 next to the hd 4850 tag was for (empty shelf above tag though)!
 
I applaud the sentiment but too little, too late and too expensive.

If this is the high-mainstream model.

It realy needed two tuners on board and the 3650 is poor.

ATI/AMD didn't listen to the end users on what was missing/lacking in their last AIW releases.

No mention of PAL, these markets were very strong for AIW previously

BUT if this is to test the waters and they can meet the needs of a decent modern AIW with a better speced release the future may become rosier for the AIW.
 
Interesting. Can't wait to see reviews of the product tho. I've been burned more than once by ATI so I will take everything they say with a very large grain of salt and not believe their product can do everything it claims until it's backed up by actual hands on users. And of course the details are in the fine print.

Notice the asterisk at the end of the title. --> "ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD Accessory Kit*
Upgrade your PC into a media powerhouse with an ATI All-in-Wonder™ HD accessory kit. The kit adds composite video, S-video, stereo audio input and component output. The perfect addition to your ATI All-in-Wonder HD (* may be sold separately)." <-- It apparently from the pictures on their web page a separate slot min card is used for the Analog in and HD out, which may cause problems for those with full slots in their case. Not to mention that how will people be able to distinguish if the product their buying may have this part sold separately. I mean why have the second card? I could buy a better video card and a 650 and get the same thing (probably for the same or cheaper price considering how expensive past AIW were).

And the usual litany of fine print at the bottom of their product page...

1 Inbound HD signal, Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive, player and 1080p-capable monitor required. Subscriber fees may apply.

3 Clear QAM digital TV channel support is dependent upon you local cable provider by your cable provider. Please contact your cable provider for a listing of digital channels supported in your area. Clear-QAM is supported in Windows Vista® using ATI Catalyst Media Center™.
4 Electronic Programming Guides requires an internet connection

6 Some content protection restrictions may apply.

Number six is scary and I assume means it supports the broadcast flag "feature". And they leave XP out in the cold again by saying Vista only for Clear QAM. Not to mention they are still using the CMC program which has it's fair share of issues and complaints. And how does one figure out if their monitor is a true 1080p monitor?

I too have moved on and use other non-ATI products to get QAM. I do wonder though with the inference from some cable companies that all TV viewing will require a STB and only a few local channels will be in QAM (like Comcast has implied), I wonder how much longer the AIW line of products and QAM decoder cards will continue to be of use? I know you can use the video in on the vid card from a STB, but there are many other products that are cheaper that could do the same thing.
 
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Interesting indeed,….

Well as it has already so eloquently been said, I too have moved on. In fact I just received a Hauppauge HD PVR yesterday via UPS and am looking forward to the more then likely difficult integration into my main entertainment PC.

I’m glad this new ATI AIW product will soon be out truth be told but it wasn’t expected and it wasn’t particularly desired on my part. I didn’t say “gee I whish ATI (AMD) would bring back the AIW line”. The newly announced ATI All-in-Wonder HD wont be a serious contender for my money until at the very least ATI (AMD) joins the ranks of SiliconDust, AverMedia and now Hauppauge in their efforts to support QAM in popular third party applications that don’t natively support QAM (Media Center Edition 2005, Vista Media Center, BeyondTV and more).

It is likely that native QAM support will be provided in Vista Media Center with the upcoming Fiji update and Snapstream is presumably working on native QAM support in BeyondTV but hardware companies that take the initiative to add addition value and functionality to their products deserve commendation. Companies that don’t innovate in this way or even try to keep up with the competition aren’t really very deserving in my eye’s.

ATI (AMD) needs a QAM channel mapping program so that customers can use their ATI (AMD) QAM capable tuners in third party products like Media Center Edition 2005, Vista Media Center and BeyondTV. ATI (AMD) is really way behind in this respect. I for one wont go back to Catalyst Media Center (AKA PowerCinema) because I cant get QAM support in Vista Media Center with an ATI (AMD) tuner. It’s a bit of a deal breaker for me.
 
Well, I got my 1st AIW when it was the best, consumer/prosumer grade capture device on the shelf. I'd had a few tuner & capture cards, & Matrox had gone down the tubes with zero XP support & flaky, sub par electronics on the cards - ever had a card take down a monitor? Till then neither had I.:mad: I stayed with the AIW's for 1 reason - decent results for less $ than separate tuner & graphics cards... Not being a gamer that end of things was irrelevant.

Vista was/is a new ball game, just as the demise of MMC put ATI in another league. I don't feel that I can count on ATI for a full solution anymore; I would have thought they'd release the new CMC by now. Their developers are having a time getting their regular cards working, and while Avivo continues to improve, I still have to manually edit the registry to get all the CCC Avivo controls set & working in XP as of the latest 8.6 hotfix.

All in all it stacks up to a lack of confidence as far as I'm concerned, and AMD/ATI are now just another manufacturer. I'm running an AMD CPU, ATI m/board chipset, & ATI graphics card, because I felt that they were the best decision for me at the time, and a rapidly self-destructing m/board in another PC didn't allow me the option of waiting. IF I did it today, I'd get a new ATI graphics card, but go with Intel for the CPU & chipset as prices have dropped so dramatically for a better product. As far as any new AIW goes, it'd have to be a whole lot cheaper with features comparable to the competition to even consider not buying separate components - IMHO the risk of replacing the card because of just one of the parts is too great.

I'm glad you got your HD-PVR Agustus! :D I'm still watching those - I'm a Cheap B****** who refuses to pay list, and I'm waiting to see if anyone comes up with any workable ways to get CC along with their HD recordings; maybe it'll be part of future Vista MC support? Hauppauge has always been good about CC, but Asian chipset manufacturers don't always consider it that important... I've no idea if it's possible using the HD-PVR's electronics, & from the email reply I got, neither is everybody at Hauppauge.
 
Mikiem: It would be much appreciated if you would list the regedits you use to get the CCC Avivo controls working for the Cat 8-6 drivers in XP. I've rolled backed to Cat 8-2 because of screen freezes and such. Thanks.
 
I use this script:
http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/

Followed unfortunately by manually searching for ColorVibrance_NA in Regedit -- The script the last few times has failed to find all relevant entries, so when I find a ColorVibrance_NA with a value of 1, I change it to 0 & go through the rest of the settings or values in that key also. This is a little out of date but still valuable:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11659897&postcount=2121

The avsforum owners thread (at that last link) is pretty good BTW, pointing out problems that surface & if there is a cure... definitely worth a quick browse, if there is such a thing as a quick browse with 193 pages as I'm typing this. :D
 
Thanks for the info Mikiem. Unfortunately, I have the 2600XT AGP video card, so I'm definitely backing everything up before trying. Like you, I'm much more comfortable doing my own regedits, rather than running someone else's script. I keep a log, so I can revert, well if I can get my computer to restart after the changes. Loads of fun and games with these TV cards, Right!
BTW my TVTuner is the Visiontek HD 650 PCI. Not really happy with the lack of in program settings either.
Anyway, thanks again.
 
So the All-in-Wonder HD will supposedly retail for about $199 which likely will not include the HD Accessory Kit:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/06/26/amd-smells-a-comeback-with-ati-all-in-wonder-hd

If this is essentially a 3650 + Theater 650 you really have to consider the fact that an HD 3650 can be had for as low as about ~$44 and a TV Wonder 650 PCIe can be had for ~$118 (TV Wonder 650 PCI ~$90 possibly less). Since there is only one tuner and one RF connector visibly apparent on the All-in-Wonder HD it would appear that only analog or only digital (OTA / QAM) can be functional at any given time. Therefore the All-in-Wonder HD is probably more like the older cheaper 650 PCI then the newer dual tuner (fully concurrent) 650 PCIe / USB models.

I’m in the market for a new Video card myself and I have given serous consideration to an ATI (AMD) HD 3650 based card over an 8500GT / 8600GT (not wanting to wait for the HD 4650). I want the card primarily for Blu-Ray, HD DVD and H.264 decode (files from Hauppauge HD-PVR). Since I can get this decode prowess in such cheap cards I’m happy but the price of the All-in-Wonder HD doesn’t quite sit well with me. Its just not worth the sum of its components at the given price point, at least not to me.
 
Well, was just reading in another section how the 48xx are all pretty much reference designs so far, so I'd agree - it will be a while for a nice 46XX.

I upgraded too early this year, but had no choice time-wise - one of the m/boards here had the capacitors going bad... a few looked like they exploded out the top, and several more had the tops really bulging. Long story short, the 3s were just out & were hard to find, but watching the sales daily at Newegg wound up with a very nice 2600 for a decent price and freebies thrown in... With ATI churning out those new cards, makes it nice for the consumer. :D

OTOH, I'd recommend checking out the AVS forum I keep talking about if you get the 36xx... Whole bunch of Avivo controls, and while most seem to be working now in Vista CCC, it helps to know what's going on with them for video. Still a bit of a headache in XP SP3 though, if it matters. May also be an issue with the 8.6 drivers, but won't know anything more till later today - AV software's doing a scan this am :(

Edit: The 8.6 hotfix for the 48xx cards just has an updated CCC in Vista for the 2600, which didn't fix the problem, though it did help. What's going on, at least for me, is DivX playback in wmplayer 11 - XP or Vista - caused ATI driver crashs, & fortunately recoveries. In XP turning off Hi Quality in the wmplayer performance tab under Tools menu -> Options was able to fix it - none of the other switches (in CCC or DivX codec configure) to turn off hardware accel worked. But, that option doesn't exist in wmplayer in Vista... The cure for now seems to be a registry value under HKCU\Software\DivXNetworks\DivX4Windows - "ATI Disable" - needs to be set to "1" .
 
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Agustus said:
So the All-in-Wonder HD will supposedly retail for about $199 which likely will not include the HD Accessory Kit:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/06/26/amd-smells-a-comeback-with-ati-all-in-wonder-hd

If this is essentially a 3650 + Theater 650 you really have to consider the fact that an HD 3650 can be had for as low as about ~$44 and a TV Wonder 650 PCIe can be had for ~$118 (TV Wonder 650 PCI ~$90 possibly less). Since there is only one tuner and one RF connector visibly apparent on the All-in-Wonder HD it would appear that only analog or only digital (OTA / QAM) can be functional at any given time. Therefore the All-in-Wonder HD is probably more like the older cheaper 650 PCI then the newer dual tuner (fully concurrent) 650 PCIe / USB models.

I’m in the market for a new Video card myself and I have given serous consideration to an ATI (AMD) HD 3650 based card over an 8500GT / 8600GT (not wanting to wait for the HD 4650). I want the card primarily for Blu-Ray, HD DVD and H.264 decode (files from Hauppauge HD-PVR). Since I can get this decode prowess in such cheap cards I’m happy but the price of the All-in-Wonder HD doesn’t quite sit well with me. Its just not worth the sum of its components at the given price point, at least not to me.
Click to expand...

A lot of good points. I guess it makes sense for OEMs.
 
I’ll also point out that the older legacy AIW cards have been a bit of a sore point for many that migrated to Vista and wanted to take advantage of the integrated Vista Media Center PVR application. To this day. As far as I know, the AIW (T200) line is the only group of Media Center Edition 2004/ 2005 compatible tuners that did NOT receive Vista Media Center support. That’s a very dubious distinction and a noteworthy one at that. There are a lot of people still smarting from this and no legitimate explanation was ever offered. I don’t think those legacy AIW users will have their wallets out for this.

Windows 7 isn’t that far away and I can see those who buy the new AIW HD cringing and expecting to be shafted again in the same respect. Even if it is supported in Windows 7 Media Center (probably will) the track record is enough to give you cause for concern.
 
:yes: If I were considering a new AIW card, I would have to consider whether I would be better served with a HD3650 + 2 (for example) hauppauge cards, or an 'AIW 2009' which might not work with my next OS.
 
Long story short, I don’t see anything really that could make an AIW a good choice today. But then again companies have always sold products that might not make a huge amount of sense or give the consumer a whole lot of value, so who knows?..

In the olden days you could cap with a bit rate of 20 using MMC, & there just wasn’t any comparable software for the TV cards... well... there wasn’t much of any software for the TV cards. With MMC gone, it’s a level playing field with loads of TV cards/devices out there, DVB & HDTV, QAM, & IPTV, with video accel. for viewing & playback the norm.

And it can be a royal pita. Even if you don't do much or any HD, & HDMI is irrelevant, that hardware acceleration is still there, & it can muck things up. It's also evolving with near every set of ATI drivers, not always changing for the better, as ATI tries to develop hardware designs & unified drivers to make HD & HDMI less of a hit or miss affair, while still satisfying the gamers.

Mid to low range graphics cards are cheap enough now to upgrade rather painlessly when that's the best way to cure DXVA problems &/or get better performance. Unless the AIW offered something you couldn't get from a separate TV card(s), I can't see giving up that low cost ($30 - $75) flexibility.

As far as tomorrow goes, I think a lot depends on the route Microsoft takes when/if their big Vista MC update happens. If legal decides no QAM, whatever bundled software comes with the TV card could/would be real important, whether Vista or Windows 7. And I don't know how many folks do &/or will connect to their TV card using composite, but with Vista's MC requiring an IR Blaster, might consider it a no-brainer to only buy a TV card that came with one.
 
Very good points indeed.

For what its worth, from what I gather, Fiji will more likely then not support QAM and Heterogeneous tuners (mix NTSC / QAM / ATSC / Cablecard) but there is some serious doubt that there will be H.264 and DirecTV support in this upcoming Vista Media Center update release. Snapstream is also working on native QAM support and already has H.264 support along with Hauppauge HD PVR support.

Change is coming to be sure. I still say that ATI (AMD) should have at least released beta QAM mapping tools. Just because some of the big players are effecting change doesn’t mean they should slack off.
 
Hello all, :)

I think it's great news that ATi is reviving its All-in-Wonder line! :cool:
Of course a lot has been said about it already and I agree that they need to change a few things to make it succesfull again, such as:

- offer the NTSC part of the world what they want, concerning QAM;
- offer a PAL version for all the fans abroad (including me ;));
- offer faster versions;
- offer truly live, like in the old days, when there was no delay and practically no CPU or bus load while watching TV;
- and above all, make sure there is proper driver support and decent software, like MMC used to be once!

I am still very happy with my AGP AiW X800XT (the last of the great)! :)
But if I were in for a new system, lived in a part of the world where they offered one and they had fulfilled my wishes mentioned above... I WOULD DEFINATELY BE INTERESTED IN A NEW ALL-IN-WONDER, like I have always been! :drool:
But I am glad they have taken the first step! I hope they will make it a succes again! :)

Freddy
 
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