Problems with AIW X800 XT AGP

[John Slade]

I just bought an AIW X800 XT and it's having a few problems. The
worst problem is the TV display sputters along rather than move
smoothly. You can tell when you're watching a news ticker scroll buy on
the bottom of the screen. Also there is a delay of the signal on the
card. When I had my AIW Radeon, I could put on my TV and my computer and
it would have no delay on the computer's tuner. Now there's an echo.
Then there are the times when TV won't start. The scheduler won't start
and it says there's a "runtime error". The final problem is I can play
thing recorded with ATI VCR format from DVD disks. It worked fine with
my other AIW but it just won't work here, I get a runtime error. The
files play fine off the HD. Do any of you have any solutions? I have all
current drivers for the card and Remote Wonder II. I have all the
current Windows 2000 updates and latest Direct X.

My system is:

Windows 2000 SP4
CPU: 3.00 Ghz P4
Mem: 1GB DDR400 Dual-Channel
VC: ATI AIW X800 XT 256MB
SC: Creative SB Live 5.1

Thanks in advance.

John

 

[unzarjones]

I just bought an AIW X800 XT and it's having a few problems.

Is this the first AIW card you've owned? I had the 9800pro and the
software issues, especially when upgrading, was a real PITA. I was
considering going from the 800pro to this card for the video capture,
but after reading your post I'm reconsidering. Hope you find a solution.

 

[J. Clarke]

Is this the first AIW card you've owned? I had the 9800pro and the
software issues, especially when upgrading, was a real PITA. I was
considering going from the 800pro to this card for the video capture,
but after reading your post I'm reconsidering. Hope you find a solution.

The AIWs are, these days, poor choices for video capture. The Rage Theater
chip they use is previous-generation--the TV Wonder Elite uses a newer and
significantly improved chip, or you could go with one of the several boards
that have hardware compression and encoding (Hauppauge has a number of them
including at least one dual-channel), which should give capture quality
equivalent to the AIW with much less CPU workload. If you're talking TV
capture then an HD board might be a good bet.

 

[John Slade]

Is this the first AIW card you've owned? I had the 9800pro and the
software issues, especially when upgrading, was a real PITA. I was
considering going from the 800pro to this card for the video capture,
but after reading your post I'm reconsidering. Hope you find a solution.

Actually I've had a few ATI cards the first was a 3D Expression
then I upgraded to the firs AIW Radeon. That card still works today and
I just replaced it with this X800 XT. I never had any problem with jerky
video on the old AIW card. I did have problems with driver and software
upgrades. However when it worked it worked well. This X800 XT card works
great and is worth the money. I just think they need to iron out the
software problems.

John

 

[John Slade]

unzarjones wrote:




The AIWs are, these days, poor choices for video capture. The Rage Theater
chip they use is previous-generation--the TV Wonder Elite uses a newer and
significantly improved chip, or you could go with one of the several boards
that have hardware compression and encoding (Hauppauge has a number of them
including at least one dual-channel), which should give capture quality
equivalent to the AIW with much less CPU workload. If you're talking TV
capture then an HD board might be a good bet.

I have no problems with the video capture. It's the live TV. It's
being processed so there's a delay and it's not playing smooth. When I
record the video it plays back smooth. Maybe there is a problem with the
buffers or something. It seems the ATI scheduling program is running ok
now. I still can't play .vcr files off a data DVD. I get this problem in
Windows XP and Windows 2000.

John

 

[Husky]

I have no problems with the video capture. It's the live TV. It's
being processed so there's a delay and it's not playing smooth. When I

The 9800 has the delay also. But no idea what you mean playing smooth..

record the video it plays back smooth. Maybe there is a problem with the
buffers or something. It seems the ATI scheduling program is running ok
now. I still can't play .vcr files off a data DVD. I get this problem in

this may be the DVD problem. I just got a RCA VCR-DVD recorder. Nothing but
Nero and that was intermittently could play it's DVD creations. And it failed
to play it's 3rd creation. Swapped that for a Panasonic VCR-DVD recorder. so
far with all but ATI that works.
The ATI it seems can ONLY play commercial DVD's.

Windows XP and Windows 2000.

I'm on XP Pro with the aiw9800. Got this because of the GREAT AIW 128 I used
for 7 years on a P1. I'll seriously reconsider another AIW if I ever need one.
If the software and support sux. And the hardware only works IF it has good
software, not much sense in buying a Lamboghini if it's just going to sit under
a tarp in a closed garage.
Nice that Nero's DVD stuff does work.

 

[J. Clarke]

The 9800 has the delay also. But no idea what you mean playing smooth..

this may be the DVD problem. I just got a RCA VCR-DVD recorder. Nothing
but Nero and that was intermittently could play it's DVD creations. And it
failed to play it's 3rd creation. Swapped that for a Panasonic VCR-DVD
recorder. so far with all but ATI that works.
The ATI it seems can ONLY play commercial DVD's.
I'm on XP Pro with the aiw9800. Got this because of the GREAT AIW 128 I
used for 7 years on a P1. I'll seriously reconsider another AIW if I ever
need one. If the software and support sux. And the hardware only works IF
it has good software, not much sense in buying a Lamboghini if it's just
going to sit under a tarp in a closed garage.
Nice that Nero's DVD stuff does work.

The Nero DVD player seems to be relabelled Cyberlink. I hate to say this,
but the best results I've had performance-wise were with the nvidia player
(don't need any nvidia hardware in the machine to use it), but they charge
more for that than Nero or Cyberlink. It's also the only one I've
encountered that will smoothly and reliably decode HD broadcast streams.

There is a little bit of lag on my system between the video on the display
and the video on an adjacent TV--that's not really a problem unless you're
trying to run the video on the PC and the audio direct off-air or vice
versa. There was at one time a delay in the sound--that was a known bug
that was fixed somewhere along the way, although I haven't run the AIW in a
while (went to MCE and HD a while back) and it may be broken again.

The Rage Theater 200 was very nice compared to the BT8x8, but it's no real
improvement quality-wise over the current Phillips and Conexant chips that
have significant third-party support, and the lack of an HD tuner on the
AIWs is a serious shortcoming in my book--if you've not seen HD you won't
understand why it matters, if you have seen it on a high-res monitor then
you'll want it.

 

[John Slade]

The 9800 has the delay also. But no idea what you mean playing smooth..

It's jerky like it's skipping a lot of frames.

this may be the DVD problem. I just got a RCA VCR-DVD recorder. Nothing but
Nero and that was intermittently could play it's DVD creations. And it failed
to play it's 3rd creation. Swapped that for a Panasonic VCR-DVD recorder. so
far with all but ATI that works.
The ATI it seems can ONLY play commercial DVD's.

I haven't had problems playing any DVDs though.

I'm on XP Pro with the aiw9800. Got this because of the GREAT AIW 128 I used
for 7 years on a P1. I'll seriously reconsider another AIW if I ever need one.
If the software and support sux. And the hardware only works IF it has good
software, not much sense in buying a Lamboghini if it's just going to sit under
a tarp in a closed garage.
Nice that Nero's DVD stuff does work.

Yea these latest versions of ATI software is horrible. I finally got ATI
sheduler to stop quitting but apparently it doesn't record my shows now. On
top of it all, it now stops in the middle of recording for no reason. It
just freezes whatever's being recorded and doesn't budge until I press stop.
I wonder if there is some alternative software I can use for the TV tuner
and recording TV.

John

 

[J. Clarke]

It's jerky like it's skipping a lot of frames.


I haven't had problems playing any DVDs though.


Yea these latest versions of ATI software is horrible. I finally got
ATI
sheduler to stop quitting but apparently it doesn't record my shows now.
On top of it all, it now stops in the middle of recording for no reason.
It just freezes whatever's being recorded and doesn't budge until I press
stop. I wonder if there is some alternative software I can use for the TV
tuner and recording TV.

The latest drivers are supposed to support Media Center Edition 2005, which
Microsoft did a pretty good job on. Of course you're paying for an XP
license to get it and if you need the full feature set of Pro then it won't
work for you (it's based on Pro but some things have been crippled--for
example it can join a domain at install time but not later).

 

[John Slade]

The latest drivers are supposed to support Media Center Edition 2005, which
Microsoft did a pretty good job on. Of course you're paying for an XP
license to get it and if you need the full feature set of Pro then it won't
work for you (it's based on Pro but some things have been crippled--for
example it can join a domain at install time but not later).

Thanks. Actually I did manage to get the jerky TV smoothed out. I
uninstalled everything ATI and installed from the disk that came with the
card. It works better now. So it's definitely ATI's new TV software that's
the problem. I'll try Media Center 2005 and see what it does.

John