ATI AIW 8500DV...sound good or not?

[Sciascia]

I am getting tired of the Marvel G400 TV...not because of the lack of drivers and stuff, but I am bored, because it does work fairly well. Unlike most sane people I like to work on my computer not with my comuter...I also want a new toy that will work in WinXP and I haven't had a major video problem for quite a while. I would also like to be able to increase my 3D gaming level, although the Marvel does fairly look good in most games.

The biggest drawback that I can see is that I will lose my DVDMax capability which is the best feature ever built into a TV card. I think that the trade off in performance is enough to warrant the new card though. I also would like to capture straight to MPEG2 and from the very little that I have seen it is pretty good. The whole benefit of the Marvel was to do HW compression, now they reccomend SW compression, I don't see the benefit of having the card.

Is Matrox planning on improving the 3D perfomance in the near future with any of their cards? I have just gotten back into gaming a bit and would like to improve this area, but I don't want to lose the capturing. The 8500DV sounds like the best solution to me.

Any ideas?

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

When I experimented with the last year Radeon models, I was not too impressed with their TV out. The TV became a 2nd desktop. It was like being restricted to clone mode only in DualHead. To get video to play full screen, you had maximize WMP or similar. It was not too good looking.

However, that was last year's model. The new 8500 model certainly looks impressive from its marketing material. The price is a bit high, but I <b>may</b> try the AIW version out. Maybe they learned something from working with Nintendo on the GameCube (excellent TV clarity)?

In the mean time, the other groups on MURC have some rumors on a new Matrox card with improved 3D performance. Take that info with a grain of salt, because the G550 was rumored to be the one to beat the G400Max. Unfortunately, it is not.

[mrtj1]

i want to get one of these cards, but my problem with it is how good is the capture quality? i love the quality of my caps with the g400-tv (i am one of the lucky ones who got hardware codec to work in xp) but how good is the quality of the full screen caps that the aiw 8500 dv can do? and can it do caps to other formats besides mpeg2 like avi?

[Sciascia]

From what I have been told is that it can capture to other formats, just like the G400 using other apps and SW compression. From what I have seen the quality is pretty darn good in MPEG2, it really is a plus if you are looking to use MPEG2 as your final format, no re-encoding or additional loss of quality. I just wonder if Ulead MSP6 /6.5 supports the card and/or smart rendering.

[Dr Mordrid]

DVDMAX output can, AFAIK, be retained by using a G450 PCI as a secondary display to the main AGP card.

Dr. Mordrid

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

Thanks for the update!

What does the MPEG capture max out as? In other words, what is the bitrate and frame size that can be done? With the latest CPUs, I'm starting to wonder if capturing direct to MPEG via software is becoming workable.

The item I am trying to find is a comparison of the AIW capture to ones done with a WinTV or a G450-eTV. If there is one that would give a noticeable increase in the color/clarity arena, I would soon be a customer.

Thanks

[wkulecz]

As much as I've bitched here about Matrox drivers, ATI is far worse. I wouldn't buy an ass-gasket from ATI at this point.

OTOH if you like futzing around with buggy drivers you should love ATI. Be sure to start with what is on the included CD as they are most likely not going to work quite right, then you can maximize your fun (pain) by downloading updates.

Unless they've done something radically better with the 8500 TV out, its quality will likely far inferior to the G400 Marvel or G450.

Hopefully they've at least stuck with the Agare (sp? Lucent spinoff) 1394 chip as used on the DV Wonder -- this seems to work.

If you have a Via chipset motherboard you should really have fun!

Only thing wrong with the G450 PCI is price. Talk about a gouge compared to the AGP version, Ouch!

--wally.

[dZeus]

don't you lose capture ability on the ATI card if you install a G450 DH for DVD-MAX? I thought that only the card that is set to 'primary' in the BIOS can use capturing and DVD-MAX/OpenGL (on the Matrox cards), thus not do these things at the same time with mutliple cards

[mrtj1]

Originally posted by Sciascia
From what I have been told is that it can capture to other formats, just like the G400 using other apps and SW compression. From what I have seen the quality is pretty darn good in MPEG2, it really is a plus if you are looking to use MPEG2 as your final format, no re-encoding or additional loss of quality. I just wonder if Ulead MSP6 /6.5 supports the card and/or smart rendering.

i output to divx though. 2x45 min eps per cd at 405megs each at 720x540@25fps. with the g400 it gives great quality. i really need a new card cos the g400 is really starting to piss me off now with having to lower resolution etc to do stuff and changing refresh rate down to 60 to watch dvd's.

the ati aiw is the only card i can think of that i can replace it with but need good quality caps. i had an aiw 128 16mb years ago, and after capping in mpeg-2 i had to run mpg2avi to convert it to avi (huffyuv) and then recomp that into divx. it took AGES. i am hoping that with dvd2avi it will be better now.

p.s. i tried flask back then but it was really weird output. dont know why.

so can someone who has the card tell me how good the highest quality captures look compared to the g400's hardware mjpeg, and how good an avi with picvideo mjpeg looks.

[dZeus]

Originally posted by mrtj1


i output to divx though. 2x45 min eps per cd at 405megs each at 720x540@25fps. with the g400 it gives great quality. i really need a new card cos the g400 is really starting to piss me off now with having to lower resolution etc to do stuff and changing refresh rate down to 60 to watch dvd's
...
.

720x540? is that PAL or NTSC? if your capturing/transcoding NTSC tv/dvd, it's useless to use 540 lines opposed to 480. 720x480 would be a good resolution, though you need a played like Sasami2k to use a custom 4:3 aspect ratio when watching this material on your monitor. In case of PAL it's better to capture/transcode to 720x576, since that wouldn't require vertical rescaling, and in case of DVD also no horizontal rescaling.

btw. why do you have to set your monitor at 60 Hz when watching dvd's? you _are_ using DVD-MAX for output, right?

[mrtj1]

i do have dvd max turned on but it says incorrect something or other. i have to lower the res from 75-60 to play them at 1600x1200. it doesnt affect some disks tho. pals are fine ntsc's arent.

anyway, about the divx. i use pal, but if i use x576 then the image looks squeezed in wmp 6.4 (no i wont use a newer version - i hate them) if i make it 720x540 then it fills the whole screen since 720x540 is technically 4:3 ratio. 720x480 btw, gives me black bars on the top and bottom as the height isn't enough.

besides, the rescaling doesnt matter since i get black bars on the left and top and i edit these out so i have to resize anyway.

[dZeus]

dvd-max at 1600x1200 can be limited by a reasonably low refresh indeed. At that res. it might be encouraged to run at 16bit colour depth if you like DVD-MAX or just fix your refresh at the highest it can do without losing DVD-MAX (somewhere between 65 - 75 Hz?).

the reason PAL/NTSC might not work is because earlier display drivers had a bug that when you changed the tv-output format it would 'lose' some bandwidth which would prevent dvd-max from working at higher resolutions/refresh rates. If you change the output format and suddenly it stops working, it might help to change the desktop colour depth back and forward from 16-bit/32-bit (which will 'reset' the loss of bandwidth needed for dvd-max or whatever is the exact cause of this problem).

It's still better to encode to 720x576 and play back with a player like sasami2k (www.sasami2k.com) and set the aspect ratio at 4:3. That way it will look correct on your monitor without black bars, and it will produce the best image quality on your tv as well when played back through dvd-max.

[mrtj1]

Originally posted by dZeus
dvd-max at 1600x1200 can be limited by a reasonably low refresh indeed. At that res. it might be encouraged to run at 16bit colour depth if you like DVD-MAX or just fix your refresh at the highest it can do without losing DVD-MAX (somewhere between 65 - 75 Hz?).

the reason PAL/NTSC might not work is because earlier display drivers had a bug that when you changed the tv-output format it would 'lose' some bandwidth which would prevent dvd-max from working at higher resolutions/refresh rates. If you change the output format and suddenly it stops working, it might help to change the desktop colour depth back and forward from 16-bit/32-bit (which will 'reset' the loss of bandwidth needed for dvd-max or whatever is the exact cause of this problem).

It's still better to encode to 720x576 and play back with a player like sasami2k (www.sasami2k.com) and set the aspect ratio at 4:3. That way it will look correct on your monitor without black bars, and it will produce the best image quality on your tv as well when played back through dvd-max.

i may start using 'the playa' more and i think that gives the option you mentioned. as far as using dvd max, and changing refresh rates/ colours etc, i hope that wont be an issue with the ati all in wonder.

as soon as i see that card for sale i'll pick one up i think. anyone know when they are released in the UK?

i'll keep my g400 in my current comp as when i get my aiw i'll be getting a new sys anyway. hopefully a 2000+ amd based one.

i would still like someone to tell me how good the mpeg-2 is compared to the hardware mjpeg of the g400 and how well it captures with picvideo mjpeg. someone earlier said it was pretty good, but that doesnt give me much of an idea of how good it is. it may be good compared to a wintv but against a g400?

[IM_Riktar]

Check out my post in this thread:

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?threadid=29550

In a nutshell the MPEG2 capture was VERY good. I found it nearly indistinguishable (Is that a word?) from the original captures. However I did not try an I-frame only capture to allow editing so I can't speak to that.

I wish I would have had more time to play with the card but I was under the gun to get the box out the door.

The firewire port sound interesting but the price is way too over blown for the 8500 AIW.

If the PCI version of the G450 can co-exist with a AIW without screwing each other up I may look into replacing my Marvel since the wife already has a G450 PCI in her computer. Long story, don't ask.

While I didn't have a chance to really push the AIW radeon I had through all it's paces I can say that the only thing that disappointed me was the TV output. It was truly horrible compared to my Marvel.

As an aside to the to the linked post: The person I built the computer for isn't exactly singing praises, but she is V*E*R*Y pleased with the whole system. Using it has been a trouble free experience.

[mrtj1]

thanks for the info and the link.
i think i'll get the all in wonder. well if i want a new card i dont really have much choice do i?

p.s, how does the 2nd monitor display on it? i heard you can get an adaptor for the dv-i and hook up a 2nd monitor? i have an old 15" monitor i wouldnt mind throwing into the mix.

p.p.s. does anyone know when this card is released in the UK? i've looked but cant find the damn thing anywhere.