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

[X-Caliber]

DUAL DISPLAYS ON 8500 DV ????????

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the 8500 DV allows a dualhead configuration.

[Dr Mordrid]

It does have its own vidouts, but my guess is that if you installed a PCI G450 you could use that as a secondary display and use its second head with DVDMAX.

If it worked it would be sweet.....

Dr. Mordrid

[Sciascia]

The only drawback I can see is the DVD Max (or lack of DVD Max). I am about 75% sold on it. I really want to be able to upgrade in the near future and the Marvel is the only thing really holding me back.

wkulecz

While ATI is not known for their great driver suppot, I think that all of us can remember the fiascos with the different Marvel drivers over the last 3 years. I can also say that they (ATI) do atleast have supported Win2k and actually have WinXP drivers available. While ATI has gone out and built a card with newer technology, Matrox has really dropped the ball in my opinion. They really had something with the HW capture, as soon as they dropped it they lost the battle. If that wasn't bad enough the 3D portion is just outdated and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.


I am not going to blast Matrox, because the card has been fantastic and it did everything that it was supposed too. Times have changed and the fact that I got almost 3 years out of it is quite impressive.

Matrox just doesn't have anything that can compare to the 8500DV. If they did I would buy it.

[Sciascia]

I've done a little reading on the Tech forum and Haig has said that tey do hve something in the works for 2002. Now while that is a 12 month window it is a glimmer of hope. I can't find anything out there giving clues, it is apparently pretty hush-hush, but I may hold out for it. If I don't hear anything after Febuary I amy go ahead and bail out.

I just hope that it is as good as the G400 was for the time compared to the competition

[IM_Riktar]

(Jumps on Soapbox),

From where I sit the promise of something new in 13 months holds as much water as a glass with no bottom. If I have learned anything over the past 3 years, it's that most companies will say ANYTHING to get people buying their product.

When it comes to existing customers it appears that pacification is the focal point. In my book pacification and satisfaction are miles apart.

With that in mind I am going to research and look for answers from the only people I trust,,,,,, YOU FOLKS and others in forums that have no bottom line to balance.

And for the record, I am not openly slamming any particular company or product. The fact that this posting is in a Matrox dominated forum is a matter of coincidence. My apologies to all who misinterpret this post.

(Climbs off soapbox)

Anywho, the idea of a G450 PCI residing in my box to provide DVDMax abilities is one hell of an idea. If anyone can report back that they have indeed pulled this off I am all ears.

I will start looking for a G450 PCI for a reasonable price to try on my own. The $100 new price tag is a bit much for me to shell out on an experiment. Especially this time of the year. Then again, maybe I could ask Santa for one. Hey, this could work in my favor after all.

If the future holds a G450 PCI for me I will let you all know how it works. Since the AIW Radeon had less than stellar TV-out I wrote off getting one to replace my Trusty Marvel G400. If this idea works I will be upgrading soon.

Happy Holidays to all,

[dancray]

still a better value (because of at least $150 savings....) to get an ATI wonder radeon 7500 + ATI DV wonder (3 firewire) than the ATI 8500wonder DV...same features minus the remote control and a bit slower).

[IM_Riktar]

The only thing with using all-ATI is you are stuck with the less than good TV-OUT. And as far as value I don't see any need for the horsepower of the 8500 or the 7500 for that matter. The "Plain-Jane" Radeon is just fine.

[Sciascia]

IU was wrong...apparently they are no longer designing low end analog capture cards. It does seem to make sense with the DV movement. NOt a whole lot of people wuold be willing to shell out $300-400 for a card when they can drop $30 on a firewire card. Oh well, I have a big decision to make here. Loking at it, I don't do a whole lot of capturing anymore myself, I just like the ability to do it.

[mrtj1]

Originally posted by Sciascia
IU was wrong...apparently they are no longer designing low end analog capture cards. It does seem to make sense with the DV movement. NOt a whole lot of people wuold be willing to shell out $300-400 for a card when they can drop $30 on a firewire card. Oh well, I have a big decision to make here. Loking at it, I don't do a whole lot of capturing anymore myself, I just like the ability to do it.

on ebuyer they have a radeon 8500 dv aiw for £297.

anyone know where to get it cheaper?

[Hulk]

I currently own and use an ATI AIW 128 and AIW 128 Pro. I have also owned a G400 Marvel.

In short, TV tuner on the ATI's is very good, a bit better than the G400 Marvel. Actually, the older AIW 128 is excellent while the new AIW 128 Pro is okay, about as good as the Marvel G400. The older unit used a different tuner.

Video capture on both is very good. Problem is, the new drivers which support the new Multimedia Center do not support VFW. So forget, about avi i/o and Virtual Dub capture. This is bad.

TV-Out is also pretty bad, and worse, there is always a black line at the bottom of the TV screen since these cards cannot overscan. No adjustments, registry hack, etc. will fix that!

I just called ATI to inquire about the 8500DV, because it does look promising. Unfortunately, the tech person I spoke with, who seemed very knowledgable, said no go, on TV out without the black border.

They admitted that Matrox uses a separate chip for TV out which overscans and fills the TV screen completely.

Now, it would be nice to have Firewire built in but without the TV Out support, forget it. I really don't care about games either. I'll just play at 640x480 or 800x600 and still get sufficient frame rates.

Also, I don't like MPEG II realtime capture. It's easier to do Huffuyv or even PicVideo capture and encode at high quality later. Even PicVideo at quality 19 encoded with TMPGEnc is MUCH better than the best hardware capture my PIII 850 can manage.

I've just ordered a G450 etv solely for the TV out feature. I really don't care about analog capture, I'll use my DV camera since that's the format I'm going to edit in anyway.

Mark

[bogieman]

I completely agree about the TV out on the ATI AIW boards. I have both an AIW 128 and an AIW Radeon in PC's on our home network. I also agree with Mark that the AIW 128 tuner is the best. A third computer has a G400MAX with a Rainbow Runner G - the AIW 128 tuner is superior to that as well with the antenna signal I give it.

I was intrigued by the suggestion to use a G450 PCI as a secondary display to get the DVDMax functionality but based on what I thought I knew about primary and secondary adapters, was skeptical it would work. So I put together a fresh, minimal installation using cards I have to try it out. While I don't have G450 PCI, I have the G400Max and an ATI Rage128 PCI card that I put into a machine with little else to see how they would work together. The hardware was:
- MSI K7T266-R with Athlon 1.33 GHz
- Onboard sound
- Windows 98SE
- VIA 4.28 4in1
- Directx 8.0
- Matrox G400Max AGP using Powerdesk 6.04.028
- ATI Rage128 using driver 4.13.7192

To simulate the G450 PCI as secondary, I set the bios to make the G400Max AGP the secondary adapter and let the Rage128 be primary. The result was:
- With Windows Media Player 6 or 7, I could play a video on either monitor. With the player on the ATI primary adapter, DVDMax outputs nothing; if I drag the window onto the G400 monitor, then DVDMax works as expected.
- With the ATI supplied DVD player, the DVD window is restricted to the ATI monitor, it can't be dragged to the other monitor.
- With the Matrox Divicore DVD player that came with the G400, a playing DVD window could be dragged between monitors but it is black on the G400 with no DVDMax output but it plays fine on the ATI monitor.
- The same results occur with PowerDVD 2.55.

I switched the adapters in the bios to set the G400 as primary and got this result:
- Windows Media Player 6 or 7 played on either monitor but only gave DVDMax output when on the G400.
- The DVD players would only play a DVD on the G400 and DVDMax worked as expected.
- Interestingly, the ATI DVD player would play only on the G400 and played properly - I didn't expect it to work at all.

I found changing adapters from primary to secondary to be a bit of a hassle. Although I kept the monitors attached to the same video cards, Windows mixed them up after switching (only one of the monitors was plug and play) so I had to readjust the monitor screen parameters each time I went back and forth - a nuisance.

I know from experience with the AIW128 that if it is not set to be the primary adapter, then its TV functions do not work - a "fail to initialize" error occurs. BTW, the AIW128 is in a dual monitor configuration as primary with Matrox Millenium PCI secondary - they coexist much better than the AIW with the Rage128 PCI.

So my conclusion is that the combination of an ATI AIW 8500DV with a G450 PCI would only partially work:
- With the 8500DV as primary, only WMP could use the DVDMax feature - it wouldn't work when playing a DVD.
- The live video could not be output through DVDMax.

Dave

[Hulk]

Good work Dave!

You've certainly answered a lot of questions.

Now that we know it will basically work, I still have to wonder why?

I don't think much is gained with the 8500DV over the g450 etv.

Let's see:

Firewire ports on the card, okay, worth maybe $50. If the 8500DV takes two IRQ's then there's no savings in system resources.

If the 8500DV tuner is like the AIW 128 Pro/Radeon tuner then they are on par with the etv.

Superior gaming engine. Granted, very good if you play games. I'm not interested in games.

Guide+. Very nice but I can find all that info on the web and I don't have to do the download every week.

Now, the thought of my AIW 128 (for the great tuner) with a G450 PCI is intriguing but, AIW 128 will not work with the AGP 2.0 1.5volt spec. I called ATI to confirm. I WILL be moving to P4 so this combination is out for me.

[Sciascia]

Well, the gaming portion is a concern for me. I find myself spending more time wasting with games lately. The other concern is the WinXp driver situation . I believe that Matrox is still trying to get these out for the G450. If it is anything similar to the Win2k driver situation then God help those Matrox owners.

[IM_Riktar]

For me the reason to do this is based on finishing some long overdue family projects on analog tape.

Picture it: the power of the AIW Radeon, Vid capture in Mpeg2 for TIVO functions, and some analog editing. I could still use Soft codecs for Mjpeg capture from my Hi8 tapes and output the results through the G450 PCI's vastly superior tv-out to my VCR.

The G400 Marvel did this somewhat ok but is getting a bit long in the tooth. My thought was to sell off the G400 Marvel, take the money and buy a G450 PCI, and eat the cost of an AIW Radeon which by todays prices comes in at less than $130 from most sources.

I could also go out and by a Hi8 Digital camcorder with analog-in to accomplish this with my firewire setup but that would be considerably more money and I still wouldn't have the 3D power of the Radeon.

And the gaming is important to me on some levels. While I don't exactly have a vast library of games, I do have Unreal Tournament which provides me with some enjoyment by way of blowing up the family over the home network. Or being blown up for that matter.

My other option would be to get a PCI based Radeon for gaming and leave the Marvel where it's at. If that setup would still leave me with the capturing abilities of my Marvel I would be more than happy to leave the AGP slot Matrox occupied. And from what I see PCI based radeons are getting down into the $60 range which would be even more economical.

Of course either way I have the IRQ dance to consider. As for hookups, my monitor has DB15 as well as BNC connections and can auto-sense which signal is present and switch to that. Seems like the best of both worlds.

[Sciascia]

Unfortunaely I don't have the resources for 2 monitors and I really do not want to go with to Video cards. As far as the G40 getting long in the tooth, I agree. I am just too in love withthis card. The SW MJPEG option is apparently a good option since many prefer that anyway and with that in the mix, the HW compression is out. If I was smart I would through together an editing machine and a gaming machine with a rose box (hook 2 computers up to one set of peripherals, monitor, keyboard and mouse and a switch). Of course the wife would murder me.