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ATI All in Wonder - Mac DVR

arn

arn

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Original poster
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Apr 9, 2001
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ThinkSecret reports that ATI is working on a Mac version of their All-In-Wonder video card.

Amongst other features, ATI's All-In-Wonder provides DVR (Digital Video Recorder) functionality which was popularized by ReplayTV and Tivo. ATI would not be the first to the Mac market... El Gato Software released their Eye TV Recorder for the Mac a few months ago.

One advantage of the ATI card is that the PC version currently records in MPEG-2 (vs MPEG-1)
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2002/09/17/ati-all-in-wonder-mac-dvr/
Yes, yes yes!
Those cards are great and they actually work roght, as lond as you have the latest drivers. That would be great for a Powermac. Even better if it was firewire. :)

I e-mailed then awhile ago on this and I never got a response back. Glad that Think Secret confirms it.
 
I love my ReplayTV....

not sure if I would get one of these... as the Replay is all pretty seamless.

arn
 
Originally posted by arn
I love my ReplayTV....

not sure if I would get one of these... as the Replay is all pretty seamless.

arn
Click to expand...

They're pretty good. I'm watching Star Trek on mine right now. They're not as seamless as a Tivo or a ReplayTV, but the great thing about them is since they record MPEG-2 to your computer, you can archive and edit them, plus convert them to Divx or MP4 is you feel like it. :)
 
Originally posted by edvniow


They're pretty good. I'm watching Star Trek on mine right now. They're not as seamless as a Tivo or a ReplayTV, but the great thing about them is since they record MPEG-2 to your computer, you can archive and edit them, plus convert them to Divx or MP4 is you feel like it. :)
Click to expand...

true... it's a pain to try to get the MPEG2's off the Replay.

arn
 
Any idea if these work with Dish Network receivers? If so, I'll be first in line! May just hold off on selling the Power Mac for an eMac after all...
 
Originally posted by dricci
Any idea if these work with Dish Network receivers? If so, I'll be first in line! May just hold off on selling the Power Mac for an eMac after all...
Click to expand...

The cards have two dongles with them; the first is the output, it holds the S-video, composite, coaxial digital audio and a sound card interconnect.
The input has S-video, composite and stereo audio inputs.
Inbewteen them both is the TV input. It's not the best shielded one, good for numerically higher channels, lower ones tend to get fuzzy.
So if your satellite reviever has the connections to hook it up to the input box on the card, then you're all set.
I'd love to see what this looks like on a Cinema display, mmmmmm....
 
Woo hoo!

Now this is something I would lay the money down for! (Of course, perhaps it's just another in a long line of erronious rumors.)
 
is it pci based? i'd hate for it to be agp (as their is only 1 slot) because then id be stuck choosing between this (which would be nice) and a radeon 9700pro(much nicer)...please say external firewire or pci card
 
Originally posted by BongHits
is it pci based? i'd hate for it to be agp (as their is only 1 slot) because then id be stuck choosing between this (which would be nice) and a radeon 9700pro(much nicer)...please say external firewire or pci card
Click to expand...

Sorry, they're only AGP. They quit making the PCI versions awhile ago.
A firewire version would be great, especially sonce the iMacs, eMacs and iBooks don't have AGP slots and a lot of students use them so they don't always have room fo a TV and a computer.
 
I knew this was too good to be true.

This will sell as good as their soundcard did if it only works on AGP Powermacs. Do I want a card that will let me play games and itunes with higher framerates, or do I want to watch TV on my screen and have lower framerates than the card my mac came with? I can't believe they would make this AGP only, that is unless they know that Apple will ship Macs with 2 AGP slots.
 
If you don't want the AGP version, there are firewire solutions by Sony, Formac, and Dazzle. ATI and some others make USB-in solutions. Not so good though. It could be a scaled down 9700, but it'll probably the 9000. I doubt it will be the 8500, but in some ways it's actually better than the 9000.

The 9000 does have some better (re:newer) features, but the retail doesn't have TV-Out. I was thinking about getting the 7000 PCI and/or a Matrox RTMac (if it ever came out with OS X drivers), or one of those other realtime cards (expensive though), or one of the firewire boxes. It was a tough choice, and nothing really fit right, but this would be perfect. If it turns out to be true. Maybe I will get a Tower instead of a PowerBook.

Wonder how much it will cost?
 
That PC/Mac platform note you see refers to the images that you can view. It's just saying that you can view the images on a PC or Mac. Well, duh!

Too bad. I'd love to get an AIW for my tower, but I can't stand ATI's attitude to the Mac: flash the PC card and jack up the price. Bastages.

When it comes to video in, though, I'm used to getting jacked. I bought the Formac ProTV Stereo just before OS X came out, and now that I"m addicted to X, I can't use my card! Formac won't make a driver for me. Anyone know how I can deal with that?

A.
 
Originally posted by dricci
Any idea if these work with Dish Network receivers? If so, I'll be first in line! May just hold off on selling the Power Mac for an eMac after all...
Click to expand...

It will take Dish output as input, but won't (as of yet and as far as I know) control the satellite receiver (or a digital or premium cable box). There might be a third-party solution to that, though.
 
Originally posted by edvniow


The cards have two dongles with them; the first is the output, it holds the S-video, composite, coaxial digital audio and a sound card interconnect.
The input has S-video, composite and stereo audio inputs.
Inbewteen them both is the TV input. It's not the best shielded one, good for numerically higher channels, lower ones tend to get fuzzy.
So if your satellite reviever has the connections to hook it up to the input box on the card, then you're all set.
I'd love to see what this looks like on a Cinema display, mmmmmm....
Click to expand...

Could you explain the bit about "numerically higher channels" to someone from the UK please. Does this mean there's simply a correlation between lower date rate encoding for lower numbered channels (eg 2Mbit/S) and higher data rates for higher channels (eg 8Mbits/S), or is something more subtle?

thanks.

PS I ask 'cause I'm interested and want to end up knowing whether to pursue for use in the UK.
 
Originally posted by nixd2001


Could you explain the bit about "numerically higher channels" to someone from the UK please. Does this mean there's simply a correlation between lower date rate encoding for lower numbered channels (eg 2Mbit/S) and higher data rates for higher channels (eg 8Mbits/S), or is something more subtle?

thanks.

PS I ask 'cause I'm interested and want to end up knowing whether to pursue for use in the UK.
Click to expand...

Sure. :)
I don't know if there is a correlation between data rates and channel numbers in the UK, but here, the channel numbers correlate with the frequency of the channels, like channel 4 is a lower frequency than channel 35 for example. The reason why numerically lower channels, like 2-9 are fuzzy with this card is because the components inside the computer operate at similar frequencies, so there's snow, or static on the picture.
Currently, I think these cards are only for US TV signals, but I don't think it would be too much trouble to make a PAL version.

Since I seem to be Macrumor's resident AIW expert, feel free to ask me any questions you think I can answer. :p
 
nixd I think edvniow was talking about vhf and uhf (though I could be wrong). All UK television is UHF, which is higher than vhf. But then again there are lower channels within the UHF band as well...

And it depends on where you live. BBC1 may actually be on a frequency (channel) higher than BBC2, and Channel 4 may be lower than ITV, etc. Now if you have a cable box, it all comes into your All-In-Wonder on the same channel. You just have to hope that it comes in at a frequency which is higher than the fields created by the computer otherwise all your station will be crud.
 
Further to my last post and to edvniow, who must have posted while I was two finger typin' away here, the All-In-Wonder does work with PAL. I installed one in a PC not long ago.

It's not just the PVR aspect which is great about them - and by the way you can capture uncompressed if you have the disc space and speed (disc rpm) to do it, and recompress at your leisure for even better vids - it the time shifting idea. Pause real-time tv and get a drink or something, then press play and it's right where you left it.

TiVo and the like haven't really caught on over here (UK) so these things are still all a bit new!
 
Originally posted by asjb
Further to my last post and to edvniow, who must have posted while I was two finger typin' away here, the All-In-Wonder does work with PAL. I installed one in a PC not long ago.
Click to expand...

Really? I had no idea that it worked with PAL. I thought the tuner was incompatible. Maybe it's not. Is your card a slightly different version than the US's or not?

Edit: You're right, Drive speed makes a HUGE difference when you're recording. I just upgraded to a 7200 rpm from a 5400 rpm and I get no dropped frames with my 667 PIII, just as lond as I'm not multitasking.
 
I'm on NTL so I get video through a cable STB (DOCSIS and MPEG2 streams) which are (as said) all tuned down to one stream. The connection between the STB and the AV Receiver (to get the DVD 5.1 surround sound stuff - toy from Christmas :) ) is (IFRC) an S-Video cable. So the UHF/VHF world has been left behind, but PAL versus NTSC is still relevant. I haven't looked at analogue video capture for ages, so I'm totally out of date as to where the world is. I know that Tivos are around in the UK, and there's even an EPG patch to get them to understand the channel numbering of NTL. But the PM is in the office at home and the TV is downstairs and most evenings are mainly spent working in the office - being able to sling CNN, Discover or National Geographic up in a corner of the screen would be so nice.

So back to a real question. Can the AIW take S-Video input and handle this?
 
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