Support NeoGAF

[SickBoy]

Just wondering if anyone has one of ATI's AIW cards...

My vid card needs to be upgraded, and I'm thinking if I'm going to spend a decent amount of money, I'd like something beyond just a boost in 3D capabilities.

One thing I'm wondering is how hard would it be to record TV and then burn it to a DVD? And how much space would, say, a one-hour broadcast take up? I've found a lot of reviews to be pretty vague on these "nuts-and-bolts" sort of questions. Very annoying.

-SB

 

[CueTheMusic]

You are better off buying a seperate TV card so you don't have to pay the extra money everytime you want to upgrade your video card.

If you are recording to a MPEG2 format, it shouldn't be too difficult to create a dvd. I'm not sure how much space an hour of MPEG2 would take exactly, but it would be a decent sized chunk.

 

[border]

AIW is great if you don't upgrade videocards that often, otherwise it is cheaper to just buy a separate PCI card. ATI has some proprietary features that are nice if you plan on just watching TV.

How much HDD space MPEG2 footage takes up will depend on the quality settings. I would imagine anywhere from 1 - 3 GB. For a TV broadcast, the quality really isn't good enough to justify a "High Quality" setting anyway.

 

[Vlad]

I've had an AIW Radeon 7500 for a few years now, and I have never been able to get the capturing working correctly. Aside from the fact that it's a lot harder to set up than you'd imagine, I always had a problem with the audio not recording in synch with the video (I'm talking at least a second off, too). I tried all the usual suggestions (defragging, etc), but nothing ever worked. The TV output on it sucks pretty badly, too. I've only used the TV out a few times, but it's always super blurry, and there's these horizontal lines that slowly move down the screen.

So basically, stay away from the AIWs.

 

[RedDwarf]

I've never had an audio sync problem with my AIW 9600. Slow hard drives and lack of memory are the main culprits with that. I love mine even if I don't use it to capture that often since getting a Comcast DVR unit.

 

[lilraylewis]

I've had my 9000 pro for a while now, and I've not had many problems with it. On the whole, the capture quality is good.

 

[tenchir]

ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 TV Tuner $88

Does everything the AIW does, but will work with any videocard. It has the same theater200/tuner chip that AIW uses too, so it uses the same drivers I think.

If you want DVD, just select the appropiate DVD profile(there are multiple DVD profiles depending on the quality you want).

Feature Rich Digital PC VCR Possibilities
With the TV WONDER USB 2.0 you are introduced to these exciting multimedia tools:
Schedule and record TV programs at any time.
Capture video in MPEG 1/2 and 4 format
Capture still images
Zoom-in, pan or freeze live TV action with TV-ON-DEMAND™
The TV WONDER USB 2.0 also includes ATI’s award winning MULTIMEDIA CENTER™ software that delivers a streamlined user-friendly interface. MULTIMEDIA CENTER is a fully integrated multimedia software suite used by our elite products to manage the TV player, video CD player, audio CD player, and Digital VCR.

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

I have a 9700 aiw

 

[joaomgcd]

I have an AIW 9800 pro, and I love it.
It's excelent for capturing. If I capture something on a high setting (like 8Mb/s, MPG2) , and then record it to DVD, and watch that DVD on TV, it's as if I was watching the original broadcast. You can't really tell the difference.
I use it every day to play with my Xbox too, and it does really nice game captures as well.

 

[SickBoy]

Yeah, I'm not too worried about upgrading frequently, but to me spending that kind of money on a video card anyhow, I may as well spend $50 more and get AIW functionality.

(Just to give an idea of how infrequently I upgrade, I'm running a GeForce 2MX right now).

 

[retardboy]

I have one in my Media Center 2004. Works great. I'm gonna need to get rid of it soon though cuz I need to get an mpeg2 decoder card for 2005.

 

[marsomega]

I've had an AIW Radeon 7500 for a few years now, and I have never been able to get the capturing working correctly. Aside from the fact that it's a lot harder to set up than you'd imagine, I always had a problem with the audio not recording in synch with the video (I'm talking at least a second off, too). I tried all the usual suggestions (defragging, etc), but nothing ever worked. The TV output on it sucks pretty badly, too. I've only used the TV out a few times, but it's always super blurry, and there's these horizontal lines that slowly move down the screen.

So basically, stay away from the AIWs.

That card is WAY OLD. The experience on that card alone doesn't justify trashing the whole line.

 

[Culex]

I'm still using my AIW 9800 Pro. I love it, too.

Hopefully, the AIW X800 will be released soon, as I really want that one for an upgrade.

 

[ArcadeStickMonk]

I used an older, stand-alone, ATI capture card back in '02 and I had a hell of a time with it. I eventually got the results for the project that I wanted, but I remember cursing their software for days.

When relating this tale to Dark10x once, he assured me that ATI had cleaned up their shit by now, and in fact convinced me to buy a 9800 Pro as an upgrade.

However, I get the sense that they are bloating their drivers again, or maybe it's just the Catalyst Control Center being a seperate app. I wouldn't know myself, having moved back to Nvidia.

Just some thoughts.