How ATI Got Its Groove Back - July 2003

From the Hard Edge:

Bill’s fascination with recording TV programs to his computer and then creating DVD libraries of his favorite shows has almost evolved into a full blown obsession. Currently Bill has 4 systems dedicated to this task (currently there are 7), which should come as no surprise to those who can remember back to a few years ago when he had 13 VCRs. (Six have survived, including a Sony Beta VCR and he’s added a stand-alone DVD recorder.)

His computer-based recorders rely on two Matrox cards, older 400 series (Tried the 450e but it was terrible –Bill), a Compro Personal Cinema setup (marginal), and a Hauppauge WinTV DVR-250 board which, although a great recorder now that Ulead VideoStudio has simplified MPEG handling, has recently decided to disconnect itself from the online “one-click” TV planning guide. (There were also some frustrating initial problems with running the board in a HyperThreading Pentium 4 system and Hauppauge was rather slow, in Bill’s opinion, to address the issues.) Obviously it was time to do some upgrading. Enter ATI’s All in Wonder Radeon 9000 Pro.

Long-time Hard Edge readers will remember that Bill suffered through an amazing amount of grief with ATI’s previous All in Wonder card. The darn thing had the most atrocious television video quality. Herringbone patterns on every channel! After much discussion and whining, ATI finally attributed the problem to a too-strong cable signal in his area –but which was also coincidentally evident when Bill gave up the comfort of Basement of Doom and Pepsi Cola and drove into New York City for ATI’s official demonstration. A-hem!

From the looks of it, or at least from the looks of all of the viewable channels within the 125 possibilities available, ATI has cured the video quality problem. It also simplified external hookup, now using a pair of s-video connectors as input/output ports. On the input side, you get a small box standard R/L RCA jacks for audio, another for video, and a replicated s-video port. It’s similar to the setup Matrox uses but much smaller. The output side is served by a split cable that provides those same basic services. Gone is the FireWire port, the digital video port remains, and there’s a ‘dongle’ included that taps into the analog signals available at that port. It ends in a standard analog monitor connector in case you’re as impoverished as Bill and can only afford an analog display.

What you get in sum is a Tivo-like environment, without the annoying program suggestions, that uses GemStar GUIDE Plus+ for one-click timed recording. You can even stuff in a second tuner card and do picture-in-picture (PIP) if you want. The full specs are available from the ATI website. It’s a good, honest, TV tuner and video capture card at a reasonable price but, more importantly, in case you haven’t been watching, it also marks a pivotal point in ATI’s latest incarnation.

Recap: ATI was the name in graphics and video about 11 years ago. It got complacent and maybe a bit cocky in its stature and was unprepared for the graphics onslaught that became nVidia. Matrox snuck up on its video flank and pretty much blindsided the company. In a Tivo-like swish, switch to today: nVidia is having an off week with its latest crop of GeForce stuff, possibly the result of over-extending itself. Matrox looks as if it’s abandoned the TV tuner market, dedicating itself to producing some outstanding video cards. If the intersection of those two lines isn’t a crack in the market that ATI can stick its spear into and start leveraging serious business, nothing ever will be. Keep your eyes open. This will either turn into the second coming of ATI or there’ll be an awful lot of unused surplus graphics cards on sale on eBay.

I apologize if you find no interest in these older pieces but I've always been fascinated by how things got to be the way they are. Since I was there, I thought I'd share.