Oh good, a new MMC..ughh

[Bad Breath]

Well they did it again...ATI released a new MMC called 9.14. Nope, have not
installed it.

I'll stay with CAT 6.2 and MMC 9.08 for a LONG LONG time to come.



ATI's CAT drivers on their own seem to be well done and organized. Kudos to
the

driver team! Wonder if it's the same team that "works" on MMC? Doesn't
really matter.

I have to give the MMC team credit for at least delivering a new version
prior to the 8+

month release cycle they used in the past. Perhaps 9.15 will be released
around 02/01/07?

Who knows. Looking bellow at the MMC 9.14 release notes, both in the
resolved and known

issues, demonstrates that most of the show stopping bugs have not been
considered for this release,

and there is no clear indication they understand or care about the major
problems with this software.

Hopefully some of you folks out there can benefit from this release and the
issues they've addressed.

It addresses nothing for me... I feel sorry for the poor soles out there who
purchase and/or have a

AIW card installed in their system for the purpose of recording video, only
to be confronted with:



a) A psychotic install/uninstall/reinstall process for MMC and it's
components. Yes average user,

you must use 'Add or Remove Programs' to uninstall our stuff. Then
you'll have to use the

'AtiCimUn.exe' utility to CLEAN out our crap, but in some versions of
CAT, you'll have to dig

around in your 'C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\UninstallAll'
directory for it. Then it's possoble

you'll have to download a driver residue cleaning utility to make sure
our 'AtiCimUn.exe' did it's job

on our own components. Next you may have to reboot your PC in Safe mode
and run the driver

residue cleaner to be extra sure our stuff is gone!



b) Massive changes to MMC which are either undocumented or poorly
documented. Analog to

PCI bus digital audio comes to mind here. If you want to go back to
analog audio (no delay between

your AIW and a nearby TV), you have to use older CAT's, or do a HACK
install of the NSP and SP

drivers. ATI does not sponsor this HACK, it's a community discovery
thing. Also TVOD will magically

be forced ON in MMC 9.13+(?) But you can do a registry HACK to disable
that. Easy enough for the

average user right? And if your MMC 9.13+ based recordings start to
skip and stutter and die after

30+ minutes, you'll just have to jump back to step a) in this list and
start all over again.



c) Etc..etc...etc...ATI please read the issues in this group, and the
countless other forums (www.rage3D.com)

for a REAL customer MMC bug list.





MMC does a lot of things well, and it's a shame this product has been
suffering from a poor reputation

for this long. Please fix this product correctly, or completely dump MMC in
favor of licenseing a solid

product which customers can use without fatigue.





* * * ATI MMC 9.14 RELEASE NOTES (NOTE: Start chugging your Malox NOW) * * *



Resolved Issues
The following section provides information on issues that have been resolved
with the latest release of the ATI
Multimedia CenterT. These include the following:



1) An AVI file can now be played back when a TV recording is also taking
place



2) Launching the radio no longer results in the Select the default FM Radio
device
being listed as "Unknown AVStream Source 1"



3) The TV Source is no longer listed as "Unknown AVStream Source 1" in the
"Scan for
Channels" dialog box that appears during the TV initialization



4) A "No Signal Found" message is no longer displayed in the center of the
screen
after re-launching the MMC after its initial launch



5) Using GuidePlus+ to set a scheduled recording no longer results in the
recording
failing to activate



6) Creating a scheduled recording and selecting Start in Eazylaunch, no
longer results
in the recording starting in a windowed mode after restarting the MCE
system



7) Argentina is now set to PAL_N_COMBO resolving issues that may have been
experienced
when using the TV



8) Using the MMC to watch TV followed by launching GuildPlus+, no longer
results in the TV
station change to channel 2



9) An ATIMMC.EXE error message is no longer displayed when using the ATI MMC
to run a TV scan
under the Windows operating systems



* * * AUTHORS NOTE: Simply stunning... * * *


Known Issues with the ATI Multimedia Center
The following section provides information on known issues and product
limitation for the ATI Multimedia
CenterT 9.14. These include the following:



1) Entering the Broadcast time option and selecting to start watching a TV
program from the
beginning after watching TV for an extended period of time may result in
the Time Shift
slider bar moving to the beginning, but the playback of the video
remains in the same place.
Further details can be found in topic number 737-21519



2) Scheduling a TV recording using any supported format, may on rare
occasions result in the
scheduled recording failing to start until using the mouse to click on
any portion of the
ATI MMC. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20031



3) Starting a UTV session, followed by switching from UTV to
Component/S-Video, and then back to
UTV may result in a momentary flash of static video and audio before
the UTV session resumes
normally. Further details can be found in topic number 737-21498



4) Setting the region to PAL may result in the UTV window appearing slightly
off center. Further
details can be found in topic number 737-21513



5) When playing a timeshifted file in EAZYLOOKT mode the content cannot be
exported by pressing
the "Record" button on the remote control. Further details can be
found in topic number 737-22384



* * * AUTHORS NOTE: This must be the bug list for OS/2 WARP? * * *





* * * ATI MMC 9.14 RELEASE NOTES (NOTE: Increase or decrease your Malox
chugging NOW) * * *

 

[Tom Lake]

Well they did it again...ATI released a new MMC called 9.14. Nope, have
not installed it.

Who knows. Looking bellow at the MMC 9.14 release notes, both in the
resolved and known

It still doesn't load the TV app into GuidePlus properly. 8^(
I have Win XP SP2, AIW X800XT.

Tom Lake

 

[Bad Breath]

Yikes, sorry for that mess guys, I had MMC crashing, I mean
running in the background.

 

[Minh Tran-Le]

It still doesn't load the TV app into GuidePlus properly. 8^(
I have Win XP SP2, AIW X800XT.

Tom Lake

Actually it does. You need to update GuidePlus. Use GuidePlus Update
wizard located on the StartMenu and you should be getting the version
10.x of GuidePlus.

 

[Bad Breath]

Yeah I wish MMC wasn't stoned as well. Perhaps some day they'll get it
right,
or give us an alternative.

 

[William]

When I installed the mmc that came with the cd for x850, I could run my
tuner with either ati-mmc tv or AverMedia software. (Though AverMedia had
stereo FM support that ati did not.)

MMC TV had a nice 9x9 preview window that was better than AverMedia's 6x6,
so I would use both programs, (not at the same time). It was great.

When I updated to mmc 9.13, ATI stopped supporting third party tuner cards
and I only had AverMedia. Sad.

I was really really hoping that when ATI updated 9.13, they would add (bring
back) support for third-party tuners. NO SUCH LUCK.

Oh well.

I hope their is something in this 9.14 that was worth the trouble
installing.

William

 

[joeyberger]

****ing piece of shit software. It refuses to record the scheduled
shows, whether it's running or not. Total ass, this software is.

 

[Tom Lake]

It still doesn't load the TV app into GuidePlus properly. 8^(

Actually it does. You need to update GuidePlus. Use GuidePlus Update
wizard located on the StartMenu and you should be getting the version 10.x
of GuidePlus.

Well! I'm glad I was wrong on that one. I did the update and am now happy
with the whole package. Thanks!

Tom Lake

 

[stratus46]

****ing piece of shit software. It refuses to record the scheduled
shows, whether it's running or not. Total ass, this software is.

Well, I've been running 9.13 for 7 weeks. I would have tried it sooner
but you guys REALLY HATE MMC so I held off. But, no missed shows, no
stuttering, and finally saves file names that always work. No more
doing a 1 second 'burp' exactly 5 minutes apart. One thing it does do
is somtetimes 'grays out' the 'schedule record' for no obvious reason.
You can re-enable it by clicking record start/stop about that fast
which creates a few second recording. This has happened 3 times in
about 25 tries. Yeah I have complaints / suggestions but it is making
forward progress. As far as not supporting 3rd party tuner cards, I
wouldn't expect them to. Go buy BeyondTV or Sage TV instead of
tormenting yourself with MMC.

What I would like is multiple tuner support so I can record 2 shows at
once. I don't care if it can play a 3rd but that might be nice. I know,
both Beyond and Sage do this and that will be the next go around with a
new disk drive. At this point, the MMC is really doing an OK job for me
but I want 2 tuners for next season.

GG

 

[dieHard®]

THANX...
I've been having the same problem since installing my AIW 2006 PCI-E.
The TV Listings button was greyed out.
Up till now I've been uninstalling and reinstalling MMC & GuidePlus,
never thought to update GuidePlus...

doh!

 

[==--==]

YUP --- sh*t..... again ATi ?!?!?!?!

Now that I updated MMC and Guide+... it actually opens properly and has a
listing.

TOO BAD that the recordings I set for the F1 practice WASN'T taped, nor was
Inside F1.

Last AIW I'll ever buy. Recommend against them to my customers too.
Sad.

ATi should "pre-pay" for us all to get licenses for BEYOND TV - a product
that works. Then just fire the MMC dev group == should work out about even
cost wise.

==--==

 

[joeyberger]

Glad to see I wasn't the only one. Have rolled back to CCC 6.2 and MMC
9.061. Beyond TV doesn't allow you to switch between analog and
S-Video, I think, which is kinda crucial for me.

 

[Tom Scales]

Glad to see I wasn't the only one. Have rolled back to CCC 6.2 and MMC
9.061. Beyond TV doesn't allow you to switch between analog and
S-Video, I think, which is kinda crucial for me.

I take it that this is an AIW card? You'd be much better off spending $50
to buy a Hauppauge PVR-150 and have an actual Hardware encoder. BTV doesn't
work that well with software encoder cards.

Tom
who has 7 tuners

 

[gary]

Did they fix 9.14, so that when you JUST want to watch TV,
it WON'T automatically and always record to the hard drive?
If not, is there any way around this?

I'm still using 9.03, because it lets you watch TV without
recording to the HD, and you can press the TV-on demand
button whenever you DO want to record.

I don't want to use up my disk space when just viewing
Guide+, or adjusting recording settings with the TV running.

Thanks.
Gary
=============

 

[T Shadow]

Did they fix 9.14, so that when you JUST want to watch TV,
it WON'T automatically and always record to the hard drive?
If not, is there any way around this?

I'm still using 9.03, because it lets you watch TV without
recording to the HD, and you can press the TV-on demand
button whenever you DO want to record.

I don't want to use up my disk space when just viewing
Guide+, or adjusting recording settings with the TV running.

Thanks.
Gary
=============

ATI has the Registry change to turn it off on their website now but it says
its unsupported. Haven't tried it myself but was wondering if you have to
change the registry back to use it? You can turn off/on TVoD for the
composite and S-Video ports in the Channel page> Connectors if your using a
cable box, VCR tuner, etc. That's what I'm doing.
9.13/9.14 have desirable improvements for the HDTV Wonder and Multview but
if I only had an AIW I'd stay with 9.08 or 9.06.1 if using Guide+. If 9.03
is working for you I'd probably stay with it.
Also capture in 9.13/9.14 doesn't have a pause button.

 

[==--==]

Thanks Tom....

I agree wholeheartedly with your recommendation.
The 'issue' with me is that I bought the AIW 9800pro when it came out and it
cost me $700. I did get my gaming needs met for that time period and have no
complaints in that.
I've since moved that now dated card to my server machine and ~~ all ~~ I
want to do is use it as a TIVO. Seems simple enough.... no?

I've have every problem in the book ~ ATi support is basically useless,
"it's your machine" is their favorite comment - no matter how many other
users are reporting the exact same problem!

I p-o's me that I have to now go out and spend either $150 for a PVR or $90
to buy a software that will actually make the card do what it was SUPPOSED
to be able to do all along.

Apologize for the long rant.... but I've worked on this problem for months
now and the frustration at ATi for not being able to provide a simple
working solution is unbeleivable -- I'm sick of
installing-uninstaling-re-installing every f'in version of drivers, captures
and MMC's !

ATi - get it together !

==--==

 

[gary]

Thanks for the tip. I still would like to use TVoD, but as
the acronym indicates "on demand." Like version 9.03 which
I'm using now, it has the TVoD button, but it doesn't come
on automatically when you start the TV application or
Guide+. It just sits there, waiting for you to press it.

If the registry entry removes TVoD completely, then am
assuming it disables the button. Or does it still work, but
just not automatically? This is what I don't want if I
upgrade MMC versions.

Curious that you indicate that capture with 9.13/9.14
doesn't have a PAUSE button? Does this mean you can't pause
live TV, like with a TIVO? That was one of the main
benefits of MMC, I thought, was to enable TVoD when you
want, then pause live TV, then resume. I don't use that
feature much, but it's an advertised benefit of the AIW cards.

Thanks again,
Gary
========

 

[T Shadow]

Thanks for the tip. I still would like to use TVoD, but as
the acronym indicates "on demand." Like version 9.03 which
I'm using now, it has the TVoD button, but it doesn't come
on automatically when you start the TV application or
Guide+. It just sits there, waiting for you to press it.

If the registry entry removes TVoD completely, then am
assuming it disables the button. Or does it still work, but
just not automatically? This is what I don't want if I
upgrade MMC versions.

Curious that you indicate that capture with 9.13/9.14
doesn't have a PAUSE button? Does this mean you can't pause
live TV, like with a TIVO? That was one of the main
benefits of MMC, I thought, was to enable TVoD when you
want, then pause live TV, then resume. I don't use that
feature much, but it's an advertised benefit of the AIW cards.

Thanks again,
Gary
========

I understand what you mean about the TVoD. If you have to change the
Registry to turn it back on it'd be more like TVoPIA.
Capture with 9.08 and previous brought up the capture window and pause can
stop the capture but the window stays open. with 9.13/9.14 the only options
are close the window or wait for time to run out.