Sucky tuner on A-I-W X800xt... or is it me?

[Lee Hagen]

My system:

Giga-byte GA-7N400 pro2 ver.1
AMD XP 2800
ATI All In Wonder X800xt
1 gb ram

My problem:

This card works great. A HUGE step up from my previous ATI 8500le
card. Can't be happier, except...

The tuner seems to be nowhere the quality of the rest of the card. I
have noticeable framerates somewhere around 10 to 15 fps. The picture
is grainey and looks like it has heavy duty compression applied to it.
There is color shifting on the edges of anything vertical, especially
text. The screen is always a bit on the dark side, compared to my tv.
DVD's play just fine. No complaints.

I"ve unplugged other cable connections in the house to improve the
signal. That didn't help. The cable to the video card is a
professional one from Time Warner. It's not a problem with our
service. The tech guy at ATI had me go thru the bios and disable all
the XP services with no luck. Reinstalled the WDM drivers. Nothing.

I spent a couple of sessions with ATI techs and they agreed to ship a
new replacement card. Same problem.

Either the tuners in these are garbage or could I have some setting on
my computer that's holding this thing back?

Am I expecting too much from the tuner on this card? I figure I'm
getting 60 to 75 percent of the quality of my tv. To me, that's
unacceptable.

I came across a website that had some captured frames from the same
card and they look fine. Other reviews said the tuner worked great.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Lee Hagen

 

[rvn]

Hello Lee,

The tuner is quite good ! Compared to Hauppauge 350 and
Matrox 450., but we are using digital PAL+-B. ( NTSC we call
never the same colour ).

Only the interface is anti - ergonomic ( a reall mess !).

Bye, Jeroen

 

[Paul Murphy]

My system:

Giga-byte GA-7N400 pro2 ver.1
AMD XP 2800
ATI All In Wonder X800xt
1 gb ram

My problem:

This card works great. A HUGE step up from my previous ATI 8500le
card. Can't be happier, except...

The tuner seems to be nowhere the quality of the rest of the card. I
have noticeable framerates somewhere around 10 to 15 fps. The picture
is grainey and looks like it has heavy duty compression applied to it.

10 - 15 frames per second is way to slow and indicates there may be other
problems with your PC contributing to this Quality issue. Have the newest
motherboard chipset drivers been correctly installed? What does dxdiag say
about the setup (if you run that command from the run box)? Is DMA enabled
for all of your HDDs.

There is color shifting on the edges of anything vertical, especially
text. The screen is always a bit on the dark side, compared to my tv.
DVD's play just fine. No complaints.

You can increase Gamma or brightness settings under ATIs MMC setup otions
(if unsure how to do this there is a downloadable manual on MMC at ATIs
website which I suggest you review). My experience with All In Wonders is
that its difficult to get a picture quite as clear as a good TV can produce
if the signal is anything other than ideal but the quality should still be
perfectly viewable. Additionally with an Athlon 2800 you should be able to
record at broadcast framerates and maximum resolution with no problems - my
SMP Athlon 1600+ can even manage this.

You may also find the forums at www.rage3d.com helpful in getting to the
bottom of this but everything is telling me there are software/configuration
issues with this machine and the problems you're experiencing aren't normal
behaviour for the card.

Paul

 

[Danny Greaves]

The tuner seems to be nowhere the quality of the rest of the card. I
have noticeable framerates somewhere around 10 to 15 fps.

Im no expert but... I don't think that is even possible from a tv
tuner?

 

[J. Clarke]

My system:

Giga-byte GA-7N400 pro2 ver.1
AMD XP 2800
ATI All In Wonder X800xt
1 gb ram

My problem:

This card works great. A HUGE step up from my previous ATI 8500le
card. Can't be happier, except...

The tuner seems to be nowhere the quality of the rest of the card. I
have noticeable framerates somewhere around 10 to 15 fps. The picture
is grainey and looks like it has heavy duty compression applied to it.
There is color shifting on the edges of anything vertical, especially
text. The screen is always a bit on the dark side, compared to my tv.
DVD's play just fine. No complaints.

I"ve unplugged other cable connections in the house to improve the
signal. That didn't help. The cable to the video card is a
professional one from Time Warner. It's not a problem with our
service. The tech guy at ATI had me go thru the bios and disable all
the XP services with no luck. Reinstalled the WDM drivers. Nothing.

I spent a couple of sessions with ATI techs and they agreed to ship a
new replacement card. Same problem.

Either the tuners in these are garbage or could I have some setting on
my computer that's holding this thing back?

Am I expecting too much from the tuner on this card? I figure I'm
getting 60 to 75 percent of the quality of my tv. To me, that's
unacceptable.

I came across a website that had some captured frames from the same
card and they look fine. Other reviews said the tuner worked great.

Any ideas?

The framerate thing sounds like something is contending with or for the
decoder--try clean OS install if you can with just the video drivers and
see if it goes away.

The rest _could_ be excessive signal strength--ATI seems to select tuners
specifically for poor gain control--try going down to Rat Shack if you're
in the US (or wherever one gets electronic bits outside the US) and picking
up one of their variable attenuators and a short length of coax and see if
cutting the signal strength back a little bit helps.

 

[bubkiebki]

The 800xt AIW tuner uses frame buffering that decreases live viewing quality
to enable better recording quality. It is dificult, if not impossible, to
turn this off. I do not have a direct link, but Tom's Hardware has a great
article on this issue. The site article also has a makeshift remedy. I
tried it without success, but I also did not devote that much time trying to
make it work.