Recently bought an All in Wonder Radeon 8500DV, and I have to say my first impressions are that many of the card's features left me with my mouth hanging open on more then one occasion. I spent the day playing with it going "oooh, ahhh, oooh, wow, damn, holy ****take mushrooms!" 
The closed captioning feature is fabulous, this is the only card I know of where you can record a TV show AND save the CAPTIONING using ATI's Digital VCR format. As a hearing impaired person, I really appreciate this feature, so kudos to ATI for putting an extra amount of effort for close captioning.
Remote Control is a dream, the feeling is just weird being able to control the cursor using a remote instead of my mouse. You could almost hear the Space Odyssey theme playing in the background
Time shifting seems to work as well, which is a relief since I heard there's issues with this feature on certain mobos (Im using a SIS645 based board, which so far has performed impressively.)
One thing I dont understand though is why the resolution for TV out is limited to 800x600. Technically you can still use a greater resoltuin, but you have to pan to get around the desktop, which is extremely annoying. I know the technology exists for better resolutions, because Ive been able to get higher resolutions with my Matrox card, and it looks just as good. I wonder if this is a software or hardware design limitation by ATI.
The good thing is if you dont mind setting your primary display to 800x600 temporarily, you can watch full screen TV on your TV, and take advantage of using time shifting and watching pre recorded files on your TV. I tried it and it looks pretty impressive. The image quality is not the greatest, but the difference between watching TV through normal cable and watching it using the TV software (with TV out enabled) was minute.
My only question is how to best operate DVD. I use PowerDVD XP, and would rather continue to use that because of its superior audio features. I think I have to go through the same motions watching DVD on TV out as I do for watching prerecorded shows on TV out, that is, setting both displays to 800x600 to avoid the panning annoyance, and setting TV to primary display. Seems to be a bit of a pain, but oh well.
Those who also own the card, how do you watch DVD? Do you use ATI's software or a third party one, and what settings worked best for you?
Overall, a fabulous card. Thanks ATI for considering us hearing impaired folks.
The closed captioning feature is fabulous, this is the only card I know of where you can record a TV show AND save the CAPTIONING using ATI's Digital VCR format. As a hearing impaired person, I really appreciate this feature, so kudos to ATI for putting an extra amount of effort for close captioning.
Remote Control is a dream, the feeling is just weird being able to control the cursor using a remote instead of my mouse. You could almost hear the Space Odyssey theme playing in the background
Time shifting seems to work as well, which is a relief since I heard there's issues with this feature on certain mobos (Im using a SIS645 based board, which so far has performed impressively.)
One thing I dont understand though is why the resolution for TV out is limited to 800x600. Technically you can still use a greater resoltuin, but you have to pan to get around the desktop, which is extremely annoying. I know the technology exists for better resolutions, because Ive been able to get higher resolutions with my Matrox card, and it looks just as good. I wonder if this is a software or hardware design limitation by ATI.
The good thing is if you dont mind setting your primary display to 800x600 temporarily, you can watch full screen TV on your TV, and take advantage of using time shifting and watching pre recorded files on your TV. I tried it and it looks pretty impressive. The image quality is not the greatest, but the difference between watching TV through normal cable and watching it using the TV software (with TV out enabled) was minute.
My only question is how to best operate DVD. I use PowerDVD XP, and would rather continue to use that because of its superior audio features. I think I have to go through the same motions watching DVD on TV out as I do for watching prerecorded shows on TV out, that is, setting both displays to 800x600 to avoid the panning annoyance, and setting TV to primary display. Seems to be a bit of a pain, but oh well.
Those who also own the card, how do you watch DVD? Do you use ATI's software or a third party one, and what settings worked best for you?
Overall, a fabulous card. Thanks ATI for considering us hearing impaired folks.
