The New Theater 650 TV Tuner Solution from ATI
by Josh Venning on June 14, 2006 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
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The Card
The Theater 650 may sport some new features, but the actual card is very similar to the older Theater 550 in size and appearance. The board we have is green in color, which is uncharacteristic of ATI parts (usually their cards are red, or in the A-I-W's case dark purple) but this is likely just because our card is a reference part, and the actual product color will depend on manufacturer preference. Aside from the color, the connections are exactly the same as on the 550, with the Antenna/FM and cable TV inputs, as well as an audio/video input at the bottom.
Being a reference part, our card didn't come with any kind of software bundle, but depending on which manufacturer distributes the card, it will most likely be packaged with the same types of software and accessories that 550 cards come with. Some of the partners who will be distributing the Theater 650 are well known companies like MSI , PowerColor, ASUS, Sapphire and VisionTek.
Architecture
The architecture of the Theater 650 is very similar to the 550, but with a few in changes. The 650 (for NTSC/ATSC countries) includes a Samsung mini-can tuner capable of tuning both analog and digital channels. The "mini-can", from what we understand, is an analog tuner (like the old tin-can tuners that wasted huge amounts of board space) shrunken down to fit in the same area as a silicon tuner. This is a best of both worlds situation where we don't need to worry about the board space of a tin-can, and we shouldn't run into the tuning speed issues we can sometimes see on silicon tuners.
The tuner feeds into both a Theater 311 demodulator and the Theater 650 chips. The Theater 311 digital demodulator supports over-the-air DTV (ATSC) with an indoor antenna. This is an in-house demodulator designed by ATI for their digital TV group, and ATI is very proud of the quality of this part. Testing the Theater 311 and the digital TV capabilities of the Theater 650 are beyond the scope of this article, but we will certainly be looking into these features in the future.
As the tuner feeds into the Theater 650 chip, the signal is internally demodulated and passed into the image processing engine. This is where functions including 3D comb filtering, motion adaptive noise reduction, de-interlacing, and edge enhancement take place. After this step, the cleaned up video flows over to the MediaDSP Encode Engine. Here, ATI is capable of performing the media center requisite MPEG-2 encoding in hardware. In addition to this feature, ATI has included the ability to encode to MPEG-4 (DivX and H.264) and WMV9, through the upcoming Catalyst Media Center software. These are features we are certainly interested in testing when we are able to do so.
We are quite happy to note that with all the additional filtering and feature capabilities ATI has included, they will also be enabling end users to adjust all of these settings at a very low level. Users who know exactly what they want from noise reduction, edge enhancement, and all the other filters will be able to tweak the settings as necessary.
Features
Let's talk a little bit now about the features of the Theater 650. Being the next installment of ATI's Theater series, it will naturally include many of the features of the previous Theater 550 like worldwide audio and NTSC and PAL video standards. However, this time around ATI has added many new features not included in their older cards, or in many competing solutions for that matter.
Firstly, as we mentioned in our introduction, one of the more interesting new features of the Theater 650 is its added digital capabilities. The card is touted by ATI as using next-generation DTV technology which is not yet available in consumer electronics. Basically, the Theater 650 provides digital TV support in ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) for US, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea, as well as DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial) for European digital standards. Again, this is one of the first PC tuner cards to incorporate this feature, and certainly the first with the brand recognition of ATI.
ATI has also added some features to the 650 which address image quality, and should provide a better looking video stream. Motion adaptive 3D comb filtering has been included, which will provide sharper video and less false color. Edge enhancement has also been added to improve on image sharpness, and ATI has thankfully given users the option to turn this off, as many users prefer having control over this aspect. Better noise reduction is incorporated as well, and it is now motion compensated for sharper images with less static. Another feature is updated automatic gain and color control, which will provide brighter colors and faster brightness adjustment.
ATI has also designed the Theater 650 to be supported by the new Catalyst Media Center software which will replace ATI's previous Multimedia Center. There will be a new interface and it will provide much more user control over different aspects of video quality (like filters), which is a welcome feature.
All of these features add up to an impressive package which looks to be a significant improvement over the previous Theater cards by ATI. Specifications and buzzwords don't always correlate to a dramatic improvement in real-world applications, however, so we of course need to do some actual testing to see how image quality and CPU utilization on the Theater 650 compares to the Theater 550 and the NVIDIA DualTV MCE.
The Theater 650 may sport some new features, but the actual card is very similar to the older Theater 550 in size and appearance. The board we have is green in color, which is uncharacteristic of ATI parts (usually their cards are red, or in the A-I-W's case dark purple) but this is likely just because our card is a reference part, and the actual product color will depend on manufacturer preference. Aside from the color, the connections are exactly the same as on the 550, with the Antenna/FM and cable TV inputs, as well as an audio/video input at the bottom.
Being a reference part, our card didn't come with any kind of software bundle, but depending on which manufacturer distributes the card, it will most likely be packaged with the same types of software and accessories that 550 cards come with. Some of the partners who will be distributing the Theater 650 are well known companies like MSI , PowerColor, ASUS, Sapphire and VisionTek.
Architecture
The architecture of the Theater 650 is very similar to the 550, but with a few in changes. The 650 (for NTSC/ATSC countries) includes a Samsung mini-can tuner capable of tuning both analog and digital channels. The "mini-can", from what we understand, is an analog tuner (like the old tin-can tuners that wasted huge amounts of board space) shrunken down to fit in the same area as a silicon tuner. This is a best of both worlds situation where we don't need to worry about the board space of a tin-can, and we shouldn't run into the tuning speed issues we can sometimes see on silicon tuners.
The tuner feeds into both a Theater 311 demodulator and the Theater 650 chips. The Theater 311 digital demodulator supports over-the-air DTV (ATSC) with an indoor antenna. This is an in-house demodulator designed by ATI for their digital TV group, and ATI is very proud of the quality of this part. Testing the Theater 311 and the digital TV capabilities of the Theater 650 are beyond the scope of this article, but we will certainly be looking into these features in the future.
As the tuner feeds into the Theater 650 chip, the signal is internally demodulated and passed into the image processing engine. This is where functions including 3D comb filtering, motion adaptive noise reduction, de-interlacing, and edge enhancement take place. After this step, the cleaned up video flows over to the MediaDSP Encode Engine. Here, ATI is capable of performing the media center requisite MPEG-2 encoding in hardware. In addition to this feature, ATI has included the ability to encode to MPEG-4 (DivX and H.264) and WMV9, through the upcoming Catalyst Media Center software. These are features we are certainly interested in testing when we are able to do so.
We are quite happy to note that with all the additional filtering and feature capabilities ATI has included, they will also be enabling end users to adjust all of these settings at a very low level. Users who know exactly what they want from noise reduction, edge enhancement, and all the other filters will be able to tweak the settings as necessary.
Features
Let's talk a little bit now about the features of the Theater 650. Being the next installment of ATI's Theater series, it will naturally include many of the features of the previous Theater 550 like worldwide audio and NTSC and PAL video standards. However, this time around ATI has added many new features not included in their older cards, or in many competing solutions for that matter.
Firstly, as we mentioned in our introduction, one of the more interesting new features of the Theater 650 is its added digital capabilities. The card is touted by ATI as using next-generation DTV technology which is not yet available in consumer electronics. Basically, the Theater 650 provides digital TV support in ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) for US, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea, as well as DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial) for European digital standards. Again, this is one of the first PC tuner cards to incorporate this feature, and certainly the first with the brand recognition of ATI.
ATI has also added some features to the 650 which address image quality, and should provide a better looking video stream. Motion adaptive 3D comb filtering has been included, which will provide sharper video and less false color. Edge enhancement has also been added to improve on image sharpness, and ATI has thankfully given users the option to turn this off, as many users prefer having control over this aspect. Better noise reduction is incorporated as well, and it is now motion compensated for sharper images with less static. Another feature is updated automatic gain and color control, which will provide brighter colors and faster brightness adjustment.
ATI has also designed the Theater 650 to be supported by the new Catalyst Media Center software which will replace ATI's previous Multimedia Center. There will be a new interface and it will provide much more user control over different aspects of video quality (like filters), which is a welcome feature.
All of these features add up to an impressive package which looks to be a significant improvement over the previous Theater cards by ATI. Specifications and buzzwords don't always correlate to a dramatic improvement in real-world applications, however, so we of course need to do some actual testing to see how image quality and CPU utilization on the Theater 650 compares to the Theater 550 and the NVIDIA DualTV MCE.
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pjladyfox - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
She actually. ^__^The one thing that really irked me over the 550, which pretty much forced us to go with the X1800 AIW instead, is that without MCE 2005 it was not a very useful card. Heck, we did'nt even have the fallback of the Multimedia Center, which a lot of us who have had either ATI AIW or their stand-alone TV tuner learned to live with, and instead got shafted with the terrible bundled software. :P I mean, come on, if you bundled the nice Adobe software with the AIW why not at least do it with your tuner cards instead of pawning off the third-rate discount bin stuff?
In either event I'm hoping that whoever did this article re-labels this one since this is definatly NOT a review in any sense of the term.
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, June 15, 2006 - link
Ouch! I'm so sorry. No disrespect intended. :)
That's why at the time I went with a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150. My TV Wonder PCI is fine for just watching (provided you use very specific versions of ATI's MMC software, as some have seriously broken the audio setup in their push to go from analog to digital across the PCI bus) but all the software solutions I saw were most compatible with Hauppauge boards at the time over the Theater 550. In fact, GB-PVR, my personal favorite, is great when paired with any PVR-xxx card. Bonus: it's free.
I got a ReplayTV on the cheap with a lifetime subscription, so I dismantled my HTPC. Still, I'd love to replace my TV Wonder with a good card for casual use in my main system. With the lack of information on DVR and Catalyst Multimedia Center, this card won't be it. And I'm in full agreement of you that this article does NOT constitute a review.
SHSPVR - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
In ABC it all get this error6/14/2006 11:35:54 AM - Problem connecting to tracker - (10049, "Can't assign requested address")
hondaman - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
I fail to understand why you think its acceptable to leave out the DEFACTO capture card. AGAIN. Hauppauge is the clear industry giant in video capture, and you publish another article, flippantly referencing us to your previous review of the card. Image quality is subjective, and its important to allow us to see, and judge, the image quality instead of your "just trust me" attitude.Leaving hauppauge out of a capture card review would be like reviewing ATI's latest video card, and comparing it to SIS instead of nvidia.
Myrandex - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
One disappointing *feature* I discovered on my Theater 550 PCIE that is EXTREMELY IRRITATING is lag with the video in ports. I tried hooking up a game system to it, and if I hit the jump button for example, I would have to wait a little bit for my character to jump. I'm not talking anythign like either, I'm talking extremely noticeable. Itried contacting powercolor help, and they said update drivers (already did) and somethign else, and then quit responding to me. Is there anyway that this can be tested as if I would have known this ahead of time, I don't think I would have purchased it.nvmarino - Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - link
If you want to connect a game console to your display via your PC you want one of these:http://www.simplifidigital.com/shopsimplifi/index....">http://www.simplifidigital.com/shopsimp.../index.p...
As others have commented, tuners cards (especially those with hardware encoders) are not designed for this.
mattsimis - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
I agree, I had to get rid of my Theater 550 setup (and seems 650 is as bad) and swap back to a 7year old Brooktree 878 based TV Capture card due to the lag. The BT878 has a delay of about less than 100msec, its excellent.I have to use the Svideo Input on TV Cap Cards as the Satelite TV service here (Sky "Digital") uses encrypted signals that can only be decoder on their decoder box. Once you decode it, you can output the raw video signal (SCART RGB to Svideo adapter). I then input this into DScaler. Image quality was a bit better on the Theater 550, however the lag was unusable.
From the article it seems the lag isnt just on the Video Inputs, but the TV Tuning too, so contary to the other reply, seems everyone will notice it. Cant understand how a 2000msec delay is considered "ok" for product release.
Matt
BigLan - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
"Cant understand how a 2000msec delay is considered "ok" for product release."These types of TV cards are designed for watching TV (not video games) and specifically for timeshifting/recording TV using a PVR application with a built in TV Guide, so channel surfing isn't necessary. For that purpose a 2 second delay doesn't really matter.
What you want is a transcoder, which is a different beast altogether.
sirfergy - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
That is because it has to encode the signal. You aren't supposed to use it as a video input to your computer for consoles.Crucial - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
Your choice to not include the Hauppage cards was a slap in the face of everyone who asked for them and nothing short of a joke. The Hauppage cards are by far the more popular product and it would make more sense to compare them for those of us who might buy the new card if they infact are better. If your video card reviews followed the same pattern as your tv tuner reviews you would be the laughing stock of the internet. We want a screenshot of the apple, pattern and girl on a hauppage card to see for ourselves which card looks better. I'm guessing the couple of years old pvr150 would look better than all of them and ATI wouldn't let you show it. If not then do a couple more tests and update the review.As for the DTV portion of these cards, I'm sorry that you don't get DTV reception in your area but I couldn't care less. Millions of us do and use it. If Anandtech is going to be a top quality review site they need to find a reviewer who can get it. Important things to know about the DTV would be can a digital and analog channel be recorded at the same time? What kind of cpu usage does the tuner use when recording both or watching an analog and watching a digital? Can MCE use 2 of these cards and record 2 analog and 2 digital channels at once?
Each time I see these reviews I hope you change you tune and do a real comparison of whats out there and being used instead of being the puppet for the corporation thats giving you free product to play with.