Satalite TV box

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nondisclosure007

et al,

Thanks in advance for your help on this one. Here's my question.

I currently have a satalite box that I currently use to watch TV on my
PC. It connects to the PC via SVID and R - L audio. The video card it
connects to is a VERY ancient AGP AIW card (I've never replaced the
card because it's as steady as rock).

Now I run into the problem of ATI not supporting my AIW in the x64 bit
arena.

All I want to do is watch my satalite TV on my PC while I'm doing
'stuff' on it. I don't need a tuner, just a video card that will let
me watch TV from the satalite box.

Any idea's? Or am I stuck having to get a new AIW card?

Again, Thanks in advance.
-Michael.
 
et al,

Thanks in advance for your help on this one. Here's my question.

I currently have a satalite box that I currently use to watch TV on my
PC. It connects to the PC via SVID and R - L audio. The video card it
connects to is a VERY ancient AGP AIW card (I've never replaced the
card because it's as steady as rock).

Now I run into the problem of ATI not supporting my AIW in the x64 bit
arena.

All I want to do is watch my satalite TV on my PC while I'm doing
'stuff' on it. I don't need a tuner, just a video card that will let
me watch TV from the satalite box.

Any idea's? Or am I stuck having to get a new AIW card?

Again, Thanks in advance.
-Michael.
Click to expand...


You're looking for a VIVO card, Michael: VIVO stands for Video In
Video Out. It's effectively a card with video processing capabilities
but no tuner: since I have cable TV, I've always preferred to use a
VIVO rather than an AIW.

The problem is that ATI don't make very many VIVO cards. I think
there's a gap from the 7200s (the Radeon 64MB DDR is a VIVO card - an
adequate but not exactly high end card), then I think the 9000s or
9200s have a VIVO model in there somewhere, and there's another gap up
to the X800 and X700 models. A pity, because for many people VIVOs
are a far more satisfactory solution than an AIW. You'll find that if
you install MMC on an ATI VIVO card, it installs a 'Video In' app
rather than the 'TV' app it does for AIWs. How well this will work in
the x64 bit arena I have no idea.

The other possibility (in ATI-based cards - I understand NVidia do
quite a few VIVO models, but I'm not up on these) is an OEM card:
generally, OEM manufacturers seem to make many more VIVO models than
ATI themselves do. If you look round OEM manufacturers, you can
probably find VIVO models for the equivalents of most Radeon cards
somewhere, and many of the OEMs make cards that are just as good as
ATI.

The one problem with most of the OEM VIVOs, I think, is that the Video
In/TV app from ATI's MMC suite will not install: the rest of the suite
will, including the DVD Player if you have the validating CD for it.
There are various other TV applications on the market, such as WinDVR,
PowerVCR etc, but none of them seem to work quite as well as ATI's -
YMMV. In particular, if you receive PAL/SECAM rather than NTSC
broadcasts, very few applications seem to be well optimised for these,
the ones that are being ATI's MMC, WinDVD (definitely the best of the
rest) and Showshifter (works OK - now - with VIVOs, but, for me,
horrible clunky interface).

You can sometimes get ATI's Video In/TV apps to install on OEMs by
editing the card's BIOS so it identifies itself as an ATI-made card,
but this is by no means a certain method.

HTH Patrick

<[email protected]> - take five to email me...
 
et al,

Thanks in advance for your help on this one. Here's my question.

I currently have a satalite box that I currently use to watch TV on my
PC. It connects to the PC via SVID and R - L audio. The video card it
connects to is a VERY ancient AGP AIW card (I've never replaced the
card because it's as steady as rock).

Now I run into the problem of ATI not supporting my AIW in the x64 bit
arena.

All I want to do is watch my satalite TV on my PC while I'm doing
'stuff' on it. I don't need a tuner, just a video card that will let
me watch TV from the satalite box.

Any idea's? Or am I stuck having to get a new AIW card?
Click to expand...

If you're running a 64-bit OS then it's probably time to upgrade the video.

ATI is dragging their feet on 64-bit support--too busy adding bloatware to
their control panel to be bothered with doing something unimportant like
writing drivers I guess.

The drivers that come in the box with XP64 are reported to support all the
features necessary to run the 9600 or later AIWs (Microsoft did the port
though so who knows how well it works), but they don't get connected to
Media Player by default. To connect them you need to use a Microsoft
utility called "graphedit"--it will take a while to figure out to to use it
but once you have you'll find that it's a useful problem solver. There's
some discussion of graphedit, not x64 specific but should be helpful, here:
<http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33792569&highlight=x64+graphedit>.

I've also seen a report that ChrisTV <http://www.chris-tv.com/> runs the
AIWs under XP64 with the Microsoft drivers.

From a fresh install of XP64 do you have unrecognized multimedia devices in
Device Manager? If not then your board may very well have all the drivers
installed and just need to have them connected to Media Player.

ATI is not the only outfit dragging their feet on 64-bit by the way--nobody
seems to have TV capture drivers out.
 
Hi, John.

Just to clarify for those who might be confused by Microsoft's typical
penchant for confusingly-similar names for quite different products...

There are TWO 64-bit versions of Windows XP (and Windows Server 2003), and
the names can get confusing.

The first is Windows Server 2003 64-bit Itanium Edition, which runs only on
the Itanium-based computers. This version of Windows is often referred to
as XP64.

The second WinXP version just became widely available in the last couple of
months. It is for the AMD64 chips and is officially known as Windows XP
Professional x64 Edition, or WinXP x64 for short.

It's hard to even find a mention of XP64 (for the Itanium) in Microsoft
pages now. (Not that anybody misses it.)

I've been running x64 for a month or two. And I've been checking the ATI
website frequently for support for my AIW 9600. (I retired my AIW 9000
because ATI said the new drivers would support 64-bit Windows only for
9500-and-up.) While the instructions from ATI are as complex and confusing
as ever, I've got the 5.6 drivers installed and they work well with the AIW
9600 and x64 (and with 32-bit WinXP in my dual-boot setup). But the 9.08
MMC does NOT work with my x64. When I dual-boot into 32-bit WinXP, I can
run the 9.08 MMC, but I've not found any MMC yet that works with x64. I
posted a question here a month ago (6/10/05) asking "Which MMC works with
WinXP x64?" - and have so far received no responses at all. A query to
ATI - Customer Care said there might be updated drivers in "about 3 weeks"
from 6/15/05, but I see no update posted as of today; the 9.08 MMC dated
5/17/05 is still there.

In WinXP Pro x64, the 5.6 drivers work. MMC 9.08 does not.

RC
 
R. C. White said:
Hi, John.

Just to clarify for those who might be confused by Microsoft's typical
penchant for confusingly-similar names for quite different products...

There are TWO 64-bit versions of Windows XP (and Windows Server 2003), and
the names can get confusing.

The first is Windows Server 2003 64-bit Itanium Edition, which runs only
on
the Itanium-based computers. This version of Windows is often referred to
as XP64.

The second WinXP version just became widely available in the last couple
of
months. It is for the AMD64 chips and is officially known as Windows XP
Professional x64 Edition, or WinXP x64 for short.

It's hard to even find a mention of XP64 (for the Itanium) in Microsoft
pages now. (Not that anybody misses it.)

I've been running x64 for a month or two. And I've been checking the ATI
website frequently for support for my AIW 9600. (I retired my AIW 9000
because ATI said the new drivers would support 64-bit Windows only for
9500-and-up.) While the instructions from ATI are as complex and
confusing as ever, I've got the 5.6 drivers installed and they work well
with the AIW
9600 and x64 (and with 32-bit WinXP in my dual-boot setup). But the 9.08
MMC does NOT work with my x64. When I dual-boot into 32-bit WinXP, I can
run the 9.08 MMC, but I've not found any MMC yet that works with x64. I
posted a question here a month ago (6/10/05) asking "Which MMC works with
WinXP x64?" - and have so far received no responses at all. A query to
ATI - Customer Care said there might be updated drivers in "about 3 weeks"
from 6/15/05, but I see no update posted as of today; the 9.08 MMC dated
5/17/05 is still there.

In WinXP Pro x64, the 5.6 drivers work. MMC 9.08 does not.
Click to expand...

Regardless of any of this people have AIWs working under some 64-bit version
of Windows or other on machines with 64-bit AMD processors, not Itanics,
and they way they say they are doing is to use the drivers that come WITH
their 64-bit version of Windows that runs on AMD processors, whatever
Microsoft calls it, in conjunction with graphedit, which is a Microsoft
utility to feed the right codec into Windows Media Player. And I seriously
doubt that there is an Itanium port of ChrisTV.
 
Hi, John.

Yes, as I thought I said, my AIW 9600 works fine on my AMD64 and WinXP Pro
x64, using ATI and native MS drivers.

But I can't watch TV on my computer. The DRIVERS (5.6) work, but the
MULTIMEDIA CENTER (9.08) does not.

RC
 
R. C. White said:
Hi, John.

Yes, as I thought I said, my AIW 9600 works fine on my AMD64 and WinXP Pro
x64, using ATI and native MS drivers.

But I can't watch TV on my computer. The DRIVERS (5.6) work, but the
MULTIMEDIA CENTER (9.08) does not.
Click to expand...

Sigh.

FORGET THE STINKING MULTIMEDIA CENTER.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

FORGET MULTIMEDIA CENTER. You're hung up on that.

<http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost.php?p=1333516362&postcount=6> presents
several methods of using the TV features of the AIW under 64-bit Windows,
none of which require multimedia center.

<http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33792569> provides additional
information on those methods, again with no multimedia center in sight.

These methods will _not_ work if you have installed the Catalyst 5.6
drivers, which _break_ the AIW support that came in the box with 64-bit XP.

This is discussed here:
<http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33818382&highlight=x64+AIW>
 
Hi, John.
FORGET MULTIMEDIA CENTER. You're hung up on that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm hung up on it 'cause I bought and paid for it and expect to be
able to use it. ;^{

But I do understand now that you are saying there are other ways to see TV
on my x64 computer and AIW 9600. I've taken a quick look at the links you
provided. It sounds like any decent electronics engineer could understand
the procedure. But I'm an accountant, fer gosh sakes, not a techie of any
kind. :>( I hadn't heard of GraphEdit and have no idea what a "filter
graph" is. And even though I have an MSDN subscription and all those DVDs
full of software (including GraphEdit, I suppose), I can't always figure out
how to do the things that real techies think are so simple.
These methods will _not_ work if you have installed the Catalyst 5.6
drivers, which _break_ the AIW support that came in the box with 64-bit
XP.
Click to expand...

What box? I installed x64 from a CD I burned from the MSDN DVD. Would I
have got some additional AIW support if I had bought x64 in a box? Should I
just UNinstall the 5.6 drivers altogether? My understanding was that
pre-5.6 would not work with x64; did I misread that?

I'll probably just wait another month (?) until ATI gets its MMC act
together. But thanks for the pointers anyhow. I'll read them more
carefully in a day or two and might understand what you're trying to tell
me.

RC
 
R. C. White said:
Hi, John.


Yeah, I'm hung up on it 'cause I bought and paid for it and expect to be
able to use it. ;^{

But I do understand now that you are saying there are other ways to see TV
on my x64 computer and AIW 9600. I've taken a quick look at the links you
provided. It sounds like any decent electronics engineer could understand
the procedure. But I'm an accountant, fer gosh sakes, not a techie of any
kind. :>( I hadn't heard of GraphEdit and have no idea what a "filter
graph" is. And even though I have an MSDN subscription and all those DVDs
full of software (including GraphEdit, I suppose), I can't always figure
out how to do the things that real techies think are so simple.
Click to expand...

You might do better to just download ChrisTV Lite--it's freeware and
apparently doesn't need a lot of tweaking. If it works then you can decide
whether to pay the 19 bucks for additional bells and whistles.

Otherwise, graphedit is not really that hard. A "filter graph" is what
"graphedit" produces--you have a picture of your video hardware and codecs
and you drag and drop from the output of one into the input of another
until you have a complete chain from tuner to display. If you can find a
picture of what the resulting graph is supposed to look like it's not hard
at all. If not then you have to dink with it for a while until it works.

Graphedit is in the DirectX 9 SDK, which you should have somewhere with your
MSDN stuff, or if not can download from Microsoft.

What box? I installed x64 from a CD I burned from the MSDN DVD.
Click to expand...

Which presumably came in a box of some sort <grin>. The necessary drivers
come on the distribution media of whatever kind for XP 64 bit. There are
reports that this worked with the beta downloads as well as the gold code.
Would I
have got some additional AIW support if I had bought x64 in a box? Should
I
just UNinstall the 5.6 drivers altogether? My understanding was that
pre-5.6 would not work with x64; did I misread that?
Click to expand...

You didn't misread it, but that is with reference to drivers that you
download from the ATI site. Everybody reporting success with the AIW is
using the drivers that came _with_ XP 64 bit on the CD or DVD or in the
download or however it was that they got it.

At this point you probably need to do a fresh install and use the
Microsoft-provided drivers.
 
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