ATI theatre 550

[nurbz]

Hi guys,

I recently found out about the mesmerising ATI Theatre 550 chipset, which among other things incorporate a high-quality TV tuner. It should clearly be supported by Beyond TV as some point, but has anyone heard when? Or any other news?

[btvbuddy]

nurbz , looks nice but what I really want to know is if all those super cinema tricks are software/driver based or hardware based. What I mean is will it take normal NTSC and make it look more like HDTV, this can be done by hardware line-doubling and other tricks. I would like to hear more info about this card too!

[Bilar Crais]

Check it out:


http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/theatrix.asp


I'd buy one tonight if I knew if BTV supported it!

I think all of the processing is hardware based....even has a dedicated chip for noise reduction. Hardware encoder too!

Apparently, it's not for sale yet.
How 'bout it Rkuo; will it work with BTV?

TNX

CF

[btvbuddy]

Wait a minute DOLBY DIGITAL from WITHIN Beyond TV ???? But that means that Beyond TV recordings would be in VOB format right!!!!! WOW

[nurbz]

Originally Posted by btvbuddy

nurbz , looks nice but what I really want to know is if all those super cinema tricks are software/driver based or hardware based. What I mean is will it take normal NTSC and make it look more like HDTV, this can be done by hardware line-doubling and other tricks. I would like to hear more info about this card too!

Well, you can find all info on the ATI website (check out the flash demo on the right of the page). Yes it is all hardware based (less than 5% CPU to encode in MPEG2 quality, so the CPU basically just moves data around). And no its not make normal NTSC look like HDTV, but just to improve normal analog signal as much as you can, the ultimate goal being to approach DVD quality (digital). HDTV, with its megapixel resolution, and being digital, is simply unattainable with analog-based system.