How's the TV Tuna 600 USB/PCI or 650 USB/PCIe

[Someone]

If you just bought one, how's the TV Tuna 600 USB/PCI or 650
USB/PCIe now that they've come out?

 

[Bill Anderson]

If you just bought one, how's the TV Tuna 600 USB/PCI or 650
USB/PCIe now that they've come out?

Well, it's been shipped apparently, but it won't arrive until tomorrow
at the earliest and I'm headed out of town tomorrow. It'll be Sunday
night before I can install it. I'll probably have something to report
then. Something good, I hope.

 

[William]

Well, it's been shipped apparently, but it won't arrive until tomorrow at
the earliest and I'm headed out of town tomorrow. It'll be Sunday night
before I can install it. I'll probably have something to report then.
Something good, I hope.

Bill:

What I would like to know is this: How does the FM tuner work? Since you
only have two antenna connectors, one for analogue and one for digital, how
would you receive cable television and off-air FM at the same time? You
could use a splitter in reverse feeding the cable coax and FM antenna coax
to the analogue connector, but that would cause interference for all the
lower cable channels. ( I fight this as it is because the cable feed at my
place is in the dumps - ghosting - cross modulation distortion.)

This board looks great for off-air FM and ATSC reception ( where we are
headed for.) Or cable and off-air ATSC reception. I sure hope the program
is enjoyable to use. I'm anxious to here what you think of the system.

William

 

[GMAN]

Bill:

What I would like to know is this: How does the FM tuner work? Since you
only have two antenna connectors, one for analogue and one for digital, how
would you receive cable television and off-air FM at the same time? You
could use a splitter in reverse feeding the cable coax and FM antenna coax
to the analogue connector, but that would cause interference for all the
lower cable channels. ( I fight this as it is because the cable feed at my
place is in the dumps - ghosting - cross modulation distortion.)

This board looks great for off-air FM and ATSC reception ( where we are
headed for.) Or cable and off-air ATSC reception. I sure hope the program
is enjoyable to use. I'm anxious to here what you think of the system.

William

FM radio uses the same antenna as OTA TV reception.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Bill:

What I would like to know is this: How does the FM tuner work? Since you
only have two antenna connectors, one for analogue and one for digital, how
would you receive cable television and off-air FM at the same time?

I'm not sure. I've just plugged it all in and installed the Catalyst
Multimedia Center and I'm just beginning to figure it out. The top
antenna connector appears to be only for over the air (OTA) digital
channels. I can pick up OTA HD-TV channels using that input and the
little antenna that came with my HDTV Wonder a few years ago. No TV
antenna came with the 650 PCIe. The box did include an FM radio antenna
identical to the one that was provided with my AGP All in Wonder (AIW)
9600 XP.

But ....

The FM radio antenna seems to work only when it's connected to the
second antenna connector, and of course that's the connector that's
required for cable TV. So right now I have two cables screwed into my
connectors. One is an antenna for OTA digital TV only, and the other is
for connected to my cable box. I get no FM radio when I can't connect
the FM radio antenna.

Actually, I just realized that's not quite true. Somehow I'm picking up
something that appears to be radio via my cable TV connection. When I
scanned my cable for radio (thinking I was scanning OTA) I picked up a
few apparent radio stations. They are at 87.8 and 107.8, and after
listening to them for a few minutes, I've decided they must be related
to my cable TV provider -- RCN of Washington, DC. I don't know exactly
what they are. It'll take a bit more listening to figure that out.
These stations are coming in via the cable TV connection, not the OTA
connection.

The cable TV picture is much improved from what I was getting with the
AIW 9600. It's a very noticeable improvement.

I am able to view video from a VCR using a composite connection. I
assume I'll be able to record that video too.

I tried viewing closed captions for the Boston/Cleveland game this
evening and they appeared just fine. But when I recorded a clip and
played it back, I couldn't see the captions.

So far I haven't been able to figure out how to reduce the size of the
video to postage-stamp size and put it in a corner and activate
thru-view as I could with the AIW. I can activate thru-view, but the
image is much larger than I'd like.

I guess I still have a lot of learning to do.

 

[Bill Anderson]

FM radio uses the same antenna as OTA TV reception.

Not in my brief experience. It seems to use the same input as cable TV.

 

[GMAN]

Not in my brief experience. It seems to use the same input as cable TV.

I was speaking in general terms. A roof top antenna for OTA tv is the same
type of antenna one would use for FM radio. If the FM radio transmitters are
all over the place, then you'd want a omnidirectional one. If the FM stations
are all on one hilltop like they are here in Salt Lake City, Utah, the a
unidirectional antenna is fine.

 

[William]

I was speaking in general terms. A roof top antenna for OTA tv is the same
type of antenna one would use for FM radio. If the FM radio transmitters
are
all over the place, then you'd want a omnidirectional one. If the FM
stations
are all on one hilltop like they are here in Salt Lake City, Utah, the a
unidirectional antenna is fine.

OTAtv = Cable = FM. All the same analogue connector. That's the problem.
You get to choose only one at a time. It would be great if the local cable
company re-broadcasted the local FM channels. Not in my area. It's cable,
or it's off-air TV/FM.

Anyways, lets get down to the important stuff. When the Dallas Cowboys
Cheerleaders are strutting their stuff, does that 3d comb filter make things
perky?

William

 

[Bill]

Anyways, lets get down to the important stuff. When the Dallas Cowboys
Cheerleaders are strutting their stuff, does that 3d comb filter make things
perky?

William

Doesn't that require transmission of a subject that's perky to begin
with?

Bill

 

[bennor3814]

What I would like to know is this: How does the FM tuner work? Since you
only have two antenna connectors, one for analogue and one for digital,
how would you receive cable television and off-air FM at the same time?
You could use a splitter in reverse feeding the cable coax and FM antenna
coax to the analogue connector, but that would cause interference for all
the lower cable channels. ( I fight this as it is because the cable feed
at my place is in the dumps - ghosting - cross modulation distortion.)

This board looks great for off-air FM and ATSC reception ( where we are
headed for.) Or cable and off-air ATSC reception. I sure hope the
program is enjoyable to use. I'm anxious to here what you think of the
system.

William

That is the confusion that many don't understand. These new cards present
much confusion to those of us with existing 650 cards. On the version of the
ATI Theater 650 that I bought last year around this time there are TWO cable
connectors. ONE for analog cable TV the other is for digital OTA and FM.
Using an antenna for the OTA digital connection I can receive HDTV (a few
channels) and many FM stations without issue. The new cards that VisionTek
is selling that are QAM capable are a different matter. There is much
speculation as to how or even if the QAM actually works, and more
importantly on which operating systems. There seems to be some question if
you must have Vista to view QAM, and the marketing materials thus far are
nice and vague on the issue. So if QAM doesn't actually work (or the cable
company doesn't send out those signals) than you are falling back to the OTA
HDTV antenna's for reception at which point the FM reception is no longer an
issue. Some people have indicated that they get the audio only music
channels from their cable company via QAM, others don't its a hit or miss
thing that is dependant on the local cable company one uses.

The problem with the new boards are the marketing materials from ATI and
Visiontek are contradictory and or vague at to what is supported; QAM and
Windows XP or the true dual tuning - analog/analog or digital/digital for
example. Then there is the fact that the product matrix
(http://ati.amd.com/products/tunermatrix.html) indicates that the single
tuner 650's supports QAM (which has to be typo as my 650 from last year
never indicated QAM support on the box or in any of the included materials).
There is even one poster over on Rage3D.com who said his single tuner
Visiontek 650 box listed QAM support.

One huge problem with the existing 650 and the CMC (Catalyst Media Center)
software, that has cropped up for some, is that it appears the recording of
720p HDTV is broken. The audio becomes out of sync (severely at times) from
the video after 25 minutes of recording. ATI is aware of it but has yet to
issue a fix. There is no indication, as of now, if this issue has been fixed
in the version of CMC that is shipping with these new cards.

 

[bennor3814]

I'm not sure. I've just plugged it all in and installed the Catalyst
Multimedia Center and I'm just beginning to figure it out. The top
antenna connector appears to be only for over the air (OTA) digital
channels. I can pick up OTA HD-TV channels using that input and the
little antenna that came with my HDTV Wonder a few years ago. No TV
antenna came with the 650 PCIe. The box did include an FM radio antenna
identical to the one that was provided with my AGP All in Wonder (AIW)
9600 XP.

But ....

The FM radio antenna seems to work only when it's connected to the second
antenna connector, and of course that's the connector that's required for
cable TV. So right now I have two cables screwed into my connectors. One
is an antenna for OTA digital TV only, and the other is for connected to
my cable box. I get no FM radio when I can't connect the FM radio
antenna.

Actually, I just realized that's not quite true. Somehow I'm picking up
something that appears to be radio via my cable TV connection. When I
scanned my cable for radio (thinking I was scanning OTA) I picked up a few
apparent radio stations. They are at 87.8 and 107.8, and after listening
to them for a few minutes, I've decided they must be related to my cable
TV provider -- RCN of Washington, DC. I don't know exactly what they are.
It'll take a bit more listening to figure that out. These stations are
coming in via the cable TV connection, not the OTA connection.

The cable TV picture is much improved from what I was getting with the AIW
9600. It's a very noticeable improvement.

I am able to view video from a VCR using a composite connection. I assume
I'll be able to record that video too.

I tried viewing closed captions for the Boston/Cleveland game this evening
and they appeared just fine. But when I recorded a clip and played it
back, I couldn't see the captions.

So far I haven't been able to figure out how to reduce the size of the
video to postage-stamp size and put it in a corner and activate thru-view
as I could with the AIW. I can activate thru-view, but the image is much
larger than I'd like.

I guess I still have a lot of learning to do.

Bill there are many things that the old AIW MMC could do that the new CMC
cannot do. The web browser TV window is one and the other is the background
TV. And one thing that the CMC can do that the MMC could not do; burn to
DVD. The inability of resizing of the window to a much smaller size and
doing thru view is an annoyance. And it also appears that the CMC does not
record captions and I haven't seen them any in the recordings that I've
done. I also haven't seen that option under the custom recording options in
CMC either. My two main gripes with the CMC/650 that I bought last year is;
the missing pause while recording button found on the older MMC versions
(9.06 I think). And the fact that any HDTV recordings (I just recently
discovered) on stations that broadcast at 720p has the audio out of sync
with the video after 25 minutes of recording.

Which of the 650's did you buy? Does your new 650 support QAM? Was it listed
on the box? If it does support QAM have you been able to get it working and
if so on which operating system and what software (CMC or Media Center)? And
have you tried recording a 720p HDTV station for 25+ minutes and if so does
the audio get out of sync with the video after 25 to 30 minutes?

Sorry for the many questions but some of us existing 650 users are wondering
if the new versions are better and have the bug fixes that plague us for a
year with the previous version of the 650 and CMC software.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Bill there are many things that the old AIW MMC could do that the new CMC
cannot do. The web browser TV window is one and the other is the background
TV. And one thing that the CMC can do that the MMC could not do; burn to
DVD. The inability of resizing of the window to a much smaller size and
doing thru view is an annoyance. And it also appears that the CMC does not
record captions and I haven't seen them any in the recordings that I've
done. I also haven't seen that option under the custom recording options in
CMC either. My two main gripes with the CMC/650 that I bought last year is;
the missing pause while recording button found on the older MMC versions
(9.06 I think). And the fact that any HDTV recordings (I just recently
discovered) on stations that broadcast at 720p has the audio out of sync
with the video after 25 minutes of recording.

Which of the 650's did you buy?

VisionTek TV Wonder HD 650 PCI Express

Does your new 650 support QAM? Was it listed

on the box?

The box lists "unencrypted digital ClearQAM cable TV and FM stations"

If it does support QAM have you been able to get it working and

if so on which operating system and what software (CMC or Media Center)?

I believe I may have two QAM FM radio stations working. Not sure how to
tell for sure, but they appear to be FM radio coming from my cable TV.
RCN in Washington, DC.

I have a dual-boot system: WinXP Pro and Vista Ultimate. My graphics
card is an (ATI) Sapphire HD 2600 XT. I am having an awful time getting
the HD 650 set up. My first setup gave me thru-view in WinXP. I just
installed the TV Wonder software from the disk in the box right on top
of everything that was already there.
(7-7_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_49709)
But whenever I booted I got an open Windows Explorer window on the
desktop -- opened to ATI. Strange. So I started playing around and
installed the latest drivers
(7-10_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_53250)
and things were working. Then I noticed that thru-view was no longer an
option.

Well, I have a Ghost image of my XP Pro boot partition, so I restored it
tonight to the state it was in prior to installing the TV Wonder HD 650.
This time when I loaded the HD 650 drivers from the disk on top of the
existing drivers, I killed my Soundcard. I got some sort of message
about high definition audio and a Microsoft driver that needed to be
installed. I found the driver in the system32/drivers directory and
installed it. That seems to be what killed my audio. Funny thing -- I
did the same thing Sunday night and my audio wasn't affected.

So I continue to play with it. When I have it working, I'll let you
know. I do want to use Microsoft Media Center under Vista. Not there
yet, though.

And the remote unit is weird. Seems not even to have a play button. I
wonder if this remote unit is supposed to work with Media Center? We'll
see.

Again, I'll keep everybody posted.


And

have you tried recording a 720p HDTV station for 25+ minutes and if so does
the audio get out of sync with the video after 25 to 30 minutes?

Yeah, I recorded for 20 minutes. But then I couldn't find what I'd
recorded, if in fact I recorded anything. No video file was there.
Again, I'll keep playing and let you know what I find out.

Sorry for the many questions but some of us existing 650 users are wondering
if the new versions are better and have the bug fixes that plague us for a
year with the previous version of the 650 and CMC software.

Something tells me you're gonna be disappointed.

 

[bennor3814]

But whenever I booted I got an open Windows Explorer window on the
desktop -- opened to ATI. Strange.

That's been an ongoing problem that ATI refuses to fix. But at this link at
Rage3d will help you tackle the windows explorer opens to an ATI folder bug.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33884901&highlight=ati+folder+opens

Out of curiosity does the box your 650 PCIe came in list any operating
system requirements for the QAM? From what others have said in various
forums it appears that one need the use Vista to get QAM working as no one
appears to be able to get it to work on XP.

Look in the My Documents/My Video folder for the saved recorded video. I
think CMC creates a folder called Recorded Video (or something like that).

There were a few of us over on Rage3d.com who have been speculating on the
PCIe version when it was first announced. Our concern then was that they'd
(ATI) do exactly what they did with the initial 650 PCI launch last year
around this time. Back then when the 650 was released you had many people
trying to decipher the marketing mumbo jumbo to figure out what worked with
this card and what didn't. The descriptions (hybrid tuner) was vague enough
for people to think that meant you could watch on analog and record on
digital. Then there was the recall and re-release on the cards when people
realized there was a hardware problem. And then there was the Vista disaster
where people had to hack Vista just to get the card to run. Since the
release of the initial 650 those of us who bought the card have found a few
bugs that have not been fixed and were hoping they'd be fixed in these new
versions. Right now it doesn't appear so.

If the dual tuner 650 PCIe had working QAM in Windows XP I'd by one in a
heart beat. I was going to buy one until the initial comments about these
new cards came out. Now I am sitting on the sidelines this time waiting to
see how things shake out and to see if people can figure out what these
cards can actually do.

 

[Bill Anderson]

If the dual tuner 650 PCIe had working QAM in Windows XP I'd by one in a
heart beat.

What's a simple way to tell if I have QAM working in XP? What should I
look for?

 

[bennor3814]

What's a simple way to tell if I have QAM working in XP? What should I
look for?

That's a good question. Some cable companies don't broadcast unencrypted
QAM, some do it's hit or miss. It appears that cable companies that do
broadcast unencrypted QAM usually have the local TV channels in your area
unencrypted on QAM, they might also have the HD versions of those channels
unencrypted as well. Some have reported that other channels like TNT HD are
also unencrypted. Again it's dependant on your local cable system.

Since ATI/Visiontek hasn't posted the manual (yet) for the 650 pcie I can
only guess here. From what some have said about the dual tuner usb version
they had to configure one tuner for digital and one for analog. So to that
end I would guess that you would need to connect the cable line to both
cable connectors and then configure one of the tuners for analog in CMC then
restart the configuration and select digital for the other tuner and see if
it picks up any thing while scanning for digital channels. Again it's just a
guess as I don't know how the CMC program deals with two tuners versus a
single one like the 650 pci version has. I do wonder what the manual says
(or any of the included literature) about how to connect cables to the tuner
and how to configure for QAM, if anything? Again this appears to be part of
the confusion with these new cards.

Another way to check is if you have a HD TV with a QAM tuner. You could scan
for channels with the HD TV and see what it picks up. Again it would need to
have a QAM tuner in it thought.