"Bill Anderson" <billanderson601@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:5c6dnVlQPcAQi4HanZ2dnUVZ_qOknZ2d@rcn.net...
> William wrote:
>> "Bill Anderson" <billanderson601@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:xeudnednitNCSovanZ2dnUVZ_obinZ2d@rcn.net...
>>> Someone wrote:
>>>> If you just bought one, how's the TV Tuna 600 USB/PCI or 650
>>>> USB/PCIe now that they've come out?
>>>>
>>> Well, it's been shipped apparently, but it won't arrive until tomorrow
>>> at the earliest and I'm headed out of town tomorrow. It'll be Sunday
>>> night before I can install it. I'll probably have something to report
>>> then. Something good, I hope.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Bill Anderson
>>>
>>> I am the Mighty Favog
>>
>> Bill:
>>
>> What I would like to know is this: How does the FM tuner work? Since you
>> only have two antenna connectors, one for analogue and one for digital,
>> how would you receive cable television and off-air FM at the same time?
>
> I'm not sure. I've just plugged it all in and installed the Catalyst
> Multimedia Center and I'm just beginning to figure it out. The top
> antenna connector appears to be only for over the air (OTA) digital
> channels. I can pick up OTA HD-TV channels using that input and the
> little antenna that came with my HDTV Wonder a few years ago. No TV
> antenna came with the 650 PCIe. The box did include an FM radio antenna
> identical to the one that was provided with my AGP All in Wonder (AIW)
> 9600 XP.
>
> But ....
>
> The FM radio antenna seems to work only when it's connected to the second
> antenna connector, and of course that's the connector that's required for
> cable TV. So right now I have two cables ******* into my connectors. One
> is an antenna for OTA digital TV only, and the other is for connected to
> my cable box. I get no FM radio when I can't connect the FM radio
> antenna.
>
> Actually, I just realized that's not quite true. Somehow I'm picking up
> something that appears to be radio via my cable TV connection. When I
> scanned my cable for radio (thinking I was scanning OTA) I picked up a few
> apparent radio stations. They are at 87.8 and 107.8, and after listening
> to them for a few minutes, I've decided they must be related to my cable
> TV provider -- RCN of Washington, DC. I don't know exactly what they are.
> It'll take a bit more listening to figure that out. These stations are
> coming in via the cable TV connection, not the OTA connection.
>
> The cable TV picture is much improved from what I was getting with the AIW
> 9600. It's a very noticeable improvement.
>
> I am able to view video from a VCR using a composite connection. I assume
> I'll be able to record that video too.
>
> I tried viewing closed captions for the Boston/Cleveland game this evening
> and they appeared just fine. But when I recorded a clip and played it
> back, I couldn't see the captions.
>
> So far I haven't been able to figure out how to reduce the size of the
> video to postage-stamp size and put it in a corner and activate thru-view
> as I could with the AIW. I can activate thru-view, but the image is much
> larger than I'd like.
>
> I guess I still have a lot of learning to do.
>
> --
> Bill Anderson
>
> I am the Mighty Favog
Bill there are many things that the old AIW MMC could do that the new CMC
cannot do. The web browser TV window is one and the other is the background
TV. And one thing that the CMC can do that the MMC could not do; burn to
DVD. The inability of resizing of the window to a much smaller size and
doing thru view is an annoyance. And it also appears that the CMC does not
record captions and I haven't seen them any in the recordings that I've
done. I also haven't seen that option under the custom recording options in
CMC either. My two main gripes with the CMC/650 that I bought last year is;
the missing pause while recording button found on the older MMC versions
(9.06 I think). And the fact that any HDTV recordings (I just recently
discovered) on stations that broadcast at 720p has the audio out of sync
with the video after 25 minutes of recording.
Which of the 650's did you buy? Does your new 650 support QAM? Was it listed
on the box? If it does support QAM have you been able to get it working and
if so on which operating system and what software (CMC or Media Center)? And
have you tried recording a 720p HDTV station for 25+ minutes and if so does
the audio get out of sync with the video after 25 to 30 minutes?
Sorry for the many questions but some of us existing 650 users are wondering
if the new versions are better and have the bug fixes that plague us for a
year with the previous version of the 650 and CMC software.
>
> Bill there are many things that the old AIW MMC could do that the new CMC
> cannot do. The web browser TV window is one and the other is the background
> TV. And one thing that the CMC can do that the MMC could not do; burn to
> DVD. The inability of resizing of the window to a much smaller size and
> doing thru view is an annoyance. And it also appears that the CMC does not
> record captions and I haven't seen them any in the recordings that I've
> done. I also haven't seen that option under the custom recording options in
> CMC either. My two main gripes with the CMC/650 that I bought last year is;
> the missing pause while recording button found on the older MMC versions
> (9.06 I think). And the fact that any HDTV recordings (I just recently
> discovered) on stations that broadcast at 720p has the audio out of sync
> with the video after 25 minutes of recording.
>
> Which of the 650's did you buy?
VisionTek TV Wonder HD 650 PCI Express
Does your new 650 support QAM? Was it listed
> on the box?
The box lists "unencrypted digital ClearQAM cable TV and FM stations"
If it does support QAM have you been able to get it working and
> if so on which operating system and what software (CMC or Media Center)?
I believe I may have two QAM FM radio stations working. Not sure how to
tell for sure, but they appear to be FM radio coming from my cable TV.
RCN in Washington, DC.
I have a dual-boot system: WinXP Pro and Vista Ultimate. My graphics
card is an (ATI) Sapphire HD 2600 XT. I am having an awful time getting
the HD 650 set up. My first setup gave me thru-view in WinXP. I just
installed the TV Wonder software from the disk in the box right on top
of everything that was already there.
(7-7_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_49709)
But whenever I booted I got an open Windows Explorer window on the
desktop -- opened to ATI. Strange. So I started playing around and
installed the latest drivers
(7-10_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_53250)
and things were working. Then I noticed that thru-view was no longer an
option.
Well, I have a Ghost image of my XP Pro boot partition, so I restored it
tonight to the state it was in prior to installing the TV Wonder HD 650.
This time when I loaded the HD 650 drivers from the disk on top of the
existing drivers, I killed my Soundcard. I got some sort of message
about high definition audio and a Microsoft driver that needed to be
installed. I found the driver in the system32/drivers directory and
installed it. That seems to be what killed my audio. Funny thing -- I
did the same thing Sunday night and my audio wasn't affected.
So I continue to play with it. When I have it working, I'll let you
know. I do want to use Microsoft Media Center under Vista. Not there
yet, though.
And the remote unit is weird. Seems not even to have a play button. I
wonder if this remote unit is supposed to work with Media Center? We'll
see.
Again, I'll keep everybody posted.
And
> have you tried recording a 720p HDTV station for 25+ minutes and if so does
> the audio get out of sync with the video after 25 to 30 minutes?
Yeah, I recorded for 20 minutes. But then I couldn't find what I'd
recorded, if in fact I recorded anything. No video file was there.
Again, I'll keep playing and let you know what I find out.
>
> Sorry for the many questions but some of us existing 650 users are wondering
> if the new versions are better and have the bug fixes that plague us for a
> year with the previous version of the 650 and CMC software.
"Bill Anderson" <billanderson601@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:_umdncpNgchtRYLanZ2dnUVZ_j6dnZ2d@rcn.net...
> But whenever I booted I got an open Windows Explorer window on the
> desktop -- opened to ATI. Strange.
Out of curiosity does the box your 650 PCIe came in list any operating
system requirements for the QAM? From what others have said in various
forums it appears that one need the use Vista to get QAM working as no one
appears to be able to get it to work on XP.
Look in the My Documents/My Video folder for the saved recorded video. I
think CMC creates a folder called Recorded Video (or something like that).
There were a few of us over on Rage3d.com who have been speculating on the
PCIe version when it was first announced. Our concern then was that they'd
(ATI) do exactly what they did with the initial 650 PCI launch last year
around this time. Back then when the 650 was released you had many people
trying to decipher the marketing mumbo jumbo to figure out what worked with
this card and what didn't. The descriptions (hybrid tuner) was vague enough
for people to think that meant you could watch on analog and record on
digital. Then there was the recall and re-release on the cards when people
realized there was a hardware problem. And then there was the Vista disaster
where people had to hack Vista just to get the card to run. Since the
release of the initial 650 those of us who bought the card have found a few
bugs that have not been fixed and were hoping they'd be fixed in these new
versions. Right now it doesn't appear so.
If the dual tuner 650 PCIe had working QAM in Windows XP I'd by one in a
heart beat. I was going to buy one until the initial comments about these
new cards came out. Now I am sitting on the sidelines this time waiting to
see how things shake out and to see if people can figure out what these
cards can actually do.
"Bill Anderson" <billanderson601@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:gO-dndJ9TsRzQoLanZ2dnUVZ_ujinZ2d@rcn.net...
> bennor3814 wrote:
>
>>
>> If the dual tuner 650 PCIe had working QAM in Windows XP I'd by one in a
>> heart beat.
>
> What's a simple way to tell if I have QAM working in XP? What should I
> look for?
That's a good question. Some cable companies don't broadcast unencrypted
QAM, some do it's hit or miss. It appears that cable companies that do
broadcast unencrypted QAM usually have the local TV channels in your area
unencrypted on QAM, they might also have the HD versions of those channels
unencrypted as well. Some have reported that other channels like TNT HD are
also unencrypted. Again it's dependant on your local cable system.
Since ATI/Visiontek hasn't posted the manual (yet) for the 650 pcie I can
only guess here. From what some have said about the dual tuner usb version
they had to configure one tuner for digital and one for analog. So to that
end I would guess that you would need to connect the cable line to both
cable connectors and then configure one of the tuners for analog in CMC then
restart the configuration and select digital for the other tuner and see if
it picks up any thing while scanning for digital channels. Again it's just a
guess as I don't know how the CMC program deals with two tuners versus a
single one like the 650 pci version has. I do wonder what the manual says
(or any of the included literature) about how to connect cables to the tuner
and how to configure for QAM, if anything? Again this appears to be part of
the confusion with these new cards.
Another way to check is if you have a HD TV with a QAM tuner. You could scan
for channels with the HD TV and see what it picks up. Again it would need to
have a QAM tuner in it thought.
Re: How's the TV Tuna 600 USB/PCI or 650 USB/PCIe 
Linear Mode
