[emg178]

Rich, thanks for your detailed response. How about a link to that website? I do agree that the drivers / codecs released by the manufacturer *should* work better than codecs / drivers from third party folks. However, ATI was referring people to your site for their tech support; that says something about their ability to use their own product. Perhaps their software is fine now, but I've been using all in wonders for 4 years now. I don't pretend to have the kind of experience that you have. However, over that time, both cards that I have used were released w/ very buggy software. Even if it worked, I could only describe it as crap relative to snapstream products. Now, my mode of operation is to stick w/ snapstream, and get hardware / decoders that work the best w/ their products.
Although, I would much prefer getting an nvidia card, it looks like I may be stuck w/ ati for now, b/c I have only component inputs on the hdtv.