August 29, 2006, 1:37 PM PDT
New ATI TV tuner card recall rumors
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

Last week we told you about two new TV tuner cards being introduced by ATI, including its flagship TV Wonder 650, powered by the new Theater 650 Pro chip. We eagerly tore open our review unit when it arrived, but before we could install it, ATI asked us to hold off, saying it had discovered an unspecified issue with the card we received, but that a replacement would be sent as soon as possible.

Today, we hear that the card is also being pulled from retail shelves, at least at Best Buy and possibly at other outlets. Daily Tech reports, "Retail chains such as Best Buy were the first to take the new cards off store shelves."

On the Best Buy Web site, the TV Wonder 650 was no longer listed, although the other new TV tuner card introduced by ATI last week, the TV Wonder 200, was still available. CompUSA's Web site listed the 650 as "not available."

We've left a few messages with the folks at ATI but haven't gotten any offical response, so stay tuned for further developments.

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August 18, 2006, 1:12 PM PDT
ATI to introduce new TV tuner cards on Monday
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

ATI continues its sterling track record in the TV tuner card category with two new products the company will officially announce early next week. You'll have to wait until Monday to buy the ATI TV Wonder 650 or the ATI TV Wonder 200, but sharp-eyed readers have spotted both cards in the online catalogs of several PC hardware retailers, and BusinessWeek magazine just dropped a dime on the higher-end of the two cards, saying, "ATI's TV Wonder 650 card ($129) or its USB equivalent turns a PC into an entertainment powerhouse. Plug it in and you have a digital video recorder that can pause and rewind live TV, even HDTV."

We'll have full reviews of both cards next week, but in the meantime, you can check our review of the underlying technology, ATI's Theater 650 Pro chip. We looked at the Theater 650 Pro chip back in June and declared, "The new chip offers enough of a boost to image quality that TV-on-your-PC fans should give it a serious look."

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August 04, 2006, 1:55 PM PDT
SageTV shows love for Linux
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

DIY types love building and tinkering around with Linux systems. Anecdotally, we can also say they love TV, despite a professed antipathy toward corporate entertainment. It's too bad that the most popular software app for watching and recording TV programming through a computer is Windows Media Center--not exactly the first place a Linux fan is likely to turn.

Fortunately, one of the big names in DVR software, SageTV, has been supporting Linux for some time now (there are also other Linux-friendly DVR apps, such as MythTV). Sage is now offering a Linux edition of SageTV 5, including the add-on Placeshifter app, which we looked at when it was released for PCs back in April. The whole package is called SageTV Media Center for Linux V5 OEM Edition and runs $99.99, or $79.99 without the Placeshifter software.

Placeshifter, kind of like a software version of the Slingbox, lets you log in to your home media library and stream videos, music, and photos, plus live and recorded TV, from any remote machine with the Placeshifter client app. We tried out the Windows version in April and generally liked it. The new Linux version also works with Sage's Wireless Media Extender, a $159 box that connects to your TV and gives you access to media on your home network.

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August 01, 2006, 8:17 AM PDT
Semiofficial thoughts on MCE for Vista
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

Microsoft Media Center team member Matt Goyer has a popular blog about all the latest MCE comings and goings, and he's just posted a FAQ about Media Center on Windows Vista.

Most of the interesting questions are about Open Cable Uni-directional Receivers, better known as OCUR, which in layman's terms is a CableCard reader, which will allow high-quality digital cable (including HD content) on PCs, replacing the current crop of TV tuner cards. From the blog post:

Q: Will I be able to buy a CableCard reader off the shelf, a video card off the shelf, and be able to play back [OCUR] content?
A: No.

Q: Can I stream that protected [OCUR] content to an Extender?
A: Yes

Q: When are you going to provide more information about OCUR?
A: Soon. I'm sorry that we can't provide a firm date.

None of this is really new news, but it reemphasizes that you (at least initially) won't be able to upgrade your current rig to take CableCard, but instead have to buy a CableLabs-certified system with the technology built in.

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July 24, 2006, 7:42 AM PDT
AMD and ATI join forces
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

We always believed the Dell/Alienware rumors, even when the rest of the blogosphere laughed. It turned out we were right, of course. But when rumors about an AMD/ATI merger started to pop up recently, even we didn't buy it--especially after the online zeitgeist turned against it almost immediately, and everyone declared that the deal, if ever seriously contemplated, was dead.

So, imagine our surprise this morning to find that chipmaker AMD announced plans to buy video card company ATI for $5.4 billion. Of course, this is all pending regulatory approval, but it should be a done deal by Q4 2006. ATI shares jumped on the news, but AMD shares fell, with some investors thinking the company had overvalued ATI.

AMD says, via press release, "The result is a processing powerhouse: a new competitor, better equipped to drive growth, innovation, and choice for its customers in commercial and mobile computing segments and in rapidly-growing consumer electronics segments."

In the short term, consumers should not expect a major difference in the way they shop for CPUs or video cards. We expect that AMD-based systems should continue to support products from rival video card maker Nvidia.

Amusingly enough, we had some of the gang from ATI here in CNET's New York offices on Friday, showing off some new hardware. We'd like to say they spilled the beans early and swore us to secrecy, but they kept their poker faces on (if they even knew anything about the deal). We have another previously scheduled meeting later today with a different group from ATI, and we'll see what they have to say, post-announcement.

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July 10, 2006, 9:27 AM PDT
Cracking the Blu-ray/HD-DVD code
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

It's a widely accepted axiom that any new media format or copy-protection scheme will be cracked sooner or later (usually sooner). So it comes as no surprise that the copy protection on the new high-definition Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats is one step closer to being opened up, mere weeks after Blu-ray's debut.

HD Beat reports that when a Blu-ray or HD-DVD disc is being played on a PC (such as the Sony VAIO RC310G) using the HD version of Intervideo's WinDVD software, individual frames can be captured in full resolution by hitting the Print Screen key. This by itself doesn't do anyone much good, but hypothetically, you could automate the process of capturing each frame and reassembling it into a high-definition copy.

This particular software hole should be patched soon, but it's clearly the first step in what will be a long dance between hackers and hardware vendors.

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June 08, 2006, 11:48 AM PDT
Snapstream upgrades Beyond TV
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

It's been only a few months since Snapstream released the 4.2 version of its popular Beyond TV DVR software, but the company today unveiled another update, and its flagship product is now called Beyond TV 4.3.

More of an incremental upgrade than a radical change, Beyond TV 4.3 offers a handful of notable new features. Using the program's ShowSqueeze option (for backing up old shows to save disc space), you can now convert HD recordings to Windows Media and DivX formats, and save even more space by stripping out some extra subchannels from HD recordings. The DivX 6.1 video codec is also supported now, and Snapstream says using that format helps Intel dual-core CPUs encode content faster.

Hot on the heels of ATI's release this week of the new ATI Theater 650 Pro chip for TV tuners, Beyond TV 4.3 is the first DVR app to announce support for the new chip. The Theater 650 gave us the best image quality we've seen from a TV tuner, so we expect it to be popular among DVR fans.

One of the more interesting new features of Beyond TV 4.3 is called Beyond TV Buzz. While it won't improve your image quality or save hard drive space, this community service lets you see what shows are popular with other Beyond TV users. It'll show you the top 100 recorded shows from the previous week and the most popular upcoming recordings, and factor your choices into the stats, if you choose to participate. Currently on top of the list is one of the new Doctor Who episodes on the Sci-Fi Channel.

We loaded up Beyond TV 4.3 on a PC running Windows Media Center Edition. We've had some trouble in the past getting DVR software installed and set up properly, but this time it was a breeze. Our only hitch was getting Media Center to give up control of the TV tuner hardware. (Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services and right-click Media Center Receiver Service. Go to Properties and set Startup Type to Disabled.)

No one has yet come up with a DVR interface that is as elegant and well-designed as Windows Media Center, but with each iteration, Beyond TV comes closer. It also offers more settings and configuration options and greater control over your recordings than Media Center. Some users will love that; others might prefer the more basic foolproof set of tools in Media Center. Before contemplating a switch, note that unlike MCE, Beyond TV handles only TV recordings, not your entire catalog of photos, videos, and music. You have to add the sister program, called BeyondMedia, to get an all-inclusive package. We'll continue to test Beyond TV 4.3 by recording, playing, and encoding content, and we'll post a full review in the coming days.

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June 07, 2006, 2:41 PM PDT
Nvidia unveils PureVideo HD
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

Video card giant Nvidia has been calling its collection of hardware and software solutions for video image quality PureVideo for a while now. So when the company added support for HD-DVD and Blu-ray content, it made sense to call the resulting product PureVideo HD.

Announced this afternoon, PureVideo HD is platform agnostic, supporting both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and tackles some of the thornier issues involved with the new technologies, from content protection to lack of CPU headroom for decoding hi-def discs.

According to a briefing Nvidia held today, future GeForce 7000-series cards (and currently, the GeForce 7950 GX2 and the GeForce 7600 GT) will be able to play Blu-ray and HD-DVD content at full resolution, thanks to onboard HDCP support and built-in hardware acceleration (even the fastest CPUs can't handle 1080p content streaming from an optical drive at 30fps). We've got one of those 7600 GT boards in our brand-new Blu-ray Sony VAIO RC310G.

PureVideo HD-compatible versions of playback programs such as PowerDVD and InterVideo's WinDVD are expected soon, creating a secure data chain, from the next-gen drive to the video card to the playback software.

Nvidia plans to get FAQs up about PureVideo HD in the coming days. Some preliminary info is available here and here.

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June 07, 2006, 8:36 AM PDT
Blu-ray era begins with the Sony VAIO RC310G
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

Perhaps expecting things to go exactly right on 6/6/06 was a bad idea. After all, our eagerly awaited Sony VAIO RC310G ended up stuck in Indianapolis, a victim of what FedEx called "damage in transit." A mere 24 hours later, and today's much less menacing date brings us a new and unscathed Sony desktop.

What makes this system different from other VAIOs? It seems to share the same slick industrial design as its recent predecessors, and while powerful, it doesn't feature any sort of cutting-edge CPU or video card. But you don't have to open the case to find out what makes this PC unique. The answer is right in front of your eyes: the main optical drive is a Blu-ray burner, making this the first Blu-ray desktop we've gotten our hands on.

Included with our RC310G was a blank Blu-ray disc, but sadly, no actual Blu-ray movies. Mid-June, we hear, is the key date for that. Other than the Blu-ray drive, the RC310G seems very familiar--an incremental upgrade to the last RC-series PC we looked at, the VAIO RC110G.

The basic specs are nothing to sneeze at: a 3.2GHz Pentium D940 processor, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 7600GT video card, and 300GB of hard drive space. But the real reason we've been hitting refresh on the FedEx tracking page all morning is the built-in Blu-ray burner.

We'll be putting the VAIO RC 310G through its paces in CNET Labs this week, so stay tuned for our full review.

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June 06, 2006, 3:11 AM PDT
ATI unveils Theater 650 Pro
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

In our last roundup of internal TV tuner cards, ATI's TV Wonder Elite came out on top, powered by the Theater 550 Pro, a single-chip video-decoder and MPEG-encoder solution that delivers high-end TV image quality. The company's newest version--the Theater 650 Pro--was announced early Tuesday morning.

The Theater 650 gives us a new video decoder and several picture quality tweaks and performance improvements. Some of the highlights include:

Support for NTSC, PAL, and SECAM signals, plus ATSC and DVB-T (the European digital standard)

Motion adaptive 3D comb filtering to remove false color artifacts

Motion-compensated noise reduction for improved picture quality on moving objects in noisy signals

Edge-enhancement algorithms to bring out fine detail

Fine-grained color control to keep an even color saturation

Support for nonstandard video to achieve lock with older VCRs, camcorders, or other devices that may not be exactly within the NTSC, PAL, or SECAM spec.

In addition, ATI's long-standing Multimedia Center software has been renamed Catalyst Multimedia Center, and notable features include support for dual analog/digital TV tuner cards, a nice translucent video window effect, called ThruView, and the ability to record to a number of formats, including MPEG-4, WMV 9 and H.264.

Of course, many consumers will choose to use Windows Media Center as their front end, and our Theater 650 reference board hooked right up to MCE with no problems. ATI also says the Theater 650 will be compatible with Windows Vista--although the future introduction of CableCard systems for PCs will make that a moot point for most people who are serious about using their PCs as a DVR.

The Theater 650 Pro is also compatible with Media Center alternatives like CyberLink PowerCinema and Snapstream's Beyond TV. In fact, a new version of that software, Beyond TV 4.3, is launching on Thursday, June 8, and Snapstream is touting its Theater 650 Pro compatibility as a major selling point. Check back later in the week for our rundown of the new Beyond TV.

We should start seeing commercial products using the Theater 650 chip in July, but ATI sent us a reference board that we have hooked up a Media Center PC in the CNET Labs. We'll be posting our impressions in a full review shortly.

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