GeCube All-In-Wonder 9600XT 128M/TV/FM

An anonymous reader points to Hexus.net's review of ATi's newest All-In-Wonder product, writing "This looks like a rather nice product if you're running an XPC or similar." He excerpts from the review "It doesn't need an external power source, instead it's quite happy sucking from the AGP slot. The end result? Small form factor PC owners will quite happily be able to slot one into their boxes and run it without an issue. The one slot cooler and cool running RV360 core conspire to make sure heat won't be an issue in those enclosed spaces either."

Re:No Molex connector

[DeathPenguin]

The 9600 models never needed a molex connector, though the 9800 model did and all products based off the newer cores from ATi.

It's an old part.

Re:Linux?

[MikeXpop]

If you're looking for a TV tuner card for linux, ignore this. The only drivers for it do not support capture or TV-out.

Re:Hardware encoding

[IWKUA]

Not sure if this is what your looking for but, Nvidia's card [extremetech.com] offers that: "The products will include a TV tuner card with hardware MPEG-2 encoding"

Re:Linux?

[LostCluster]

I don't think ATI's ever supplied a full Linux driver for their TV tuner products. They simply have never bothered to write a version of their ATI Multimedia Center for Linux. I'm sure people have tried to come up with an open source version, but since they're working from the outside in they have the deck stacked against them.

It's analog

[Bram Stolk]

Huh...
This card has no DVI, meaning that you have
to do a totaly useless digital->analog->digital
conversion when hooking up to a flat panel.

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the Hauppauge PVR-250 or PVR-350 (or generic versions using the same chipset.) Linux support is fantastic (I should know, I'm the co-author of the ivtv driver) and much better than the ATI All-in-Wonder cards, if you actually want to capture MPEG video in addition to just video overlay.

Beware

[vandan]

ATI's Linux drivers suck arse.
I get better performance under UT2004 from my R100 ( Radeon 7200 ) with the open-source DRI drivers than I get from my R350 ( Radeon 9600 ) with ATI's drivers.

Honestly, you are better off with a Radeon 7200.

Good card, but it wont work with MythTV

[Cavalkaf]

IIRC, the ATI All-In-Wonder cards don't work with MythTV under Linux.

Re:Hardware encoding

[tsangc]

It's called the ATI eHome Wonder, a MCE2004 class (Connexant Blackbird MPEG2) card:

http://www.ati.com/products/ehome/

Not an AIW Tuner+graphics combo, but an individual tuner. It's quite well done. Hardware seems okay and it's cheap.

Never, EVER Buy One of These Refurbed!

[ThePDW]

I bought a refurbed 9600 xt AIW for an XPC that I was building for a girl and I thought I could save her some money so I bought a refurb from Newegg. It doesn't come with anything but the card. No, remote, no FM antenna, no proprietary cable. I ended up spending $40 ($20 for the cable $20 for express shipping) buying the proprietary cable that you have to use to connect the card to a monitor. Even then, the tv part of the card didn't work and had to be disabled so the computer wouldn't crash. So, I hope I can keep someone from making the same mistake I made!

Re:A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[blackmonday]

I have the ATI TV Wonder, and the included software is terrible. It hijacked my other media players, it's clunky, and it looks horrible. The best solution (for Windows) is Dscaler, no other programs I've seen come close to the great simplicity of dscaler. Best of all, it's open source.

Re:Linux support?

[geckofiend]

Sounds like maybe you shouldn't be thinking... ;)

The last AIW was recognized as just about the worst capture card on the market. All in one solutions are great for folks who don't know any better and think they're getting somethign great.

The PVR250/350, Avermedia M179 and Yuan MPG600 lines of hardware MPEG2 capture cards are by far superior and have excellent Linux support.

Easy video editor? Avidemux2 is pretty darn easy.

Re:Good card, but it wont work with MythTV

[isbhod]

you do remember correctly, this is oh so sadly true. The AIW cards are good cards under linux, i just wish they would work with myth tv. But on the other hand, there are cheapo tv cards out there that cost less than $50.00 that work beautifully with myth tv. I was able to to build a cheap PVR using myth, and 50.00 dollar card 258mb ram, 200 GB HD, and an AMD 2700 for less than $400.00, runs great.... although the tv card has no tv out so to watch what i record i have to network in the computer with the AIW card and then send that output to the tv. but hey if it wasn't complicated i probably would not have built it ;)

Re:A simple Do-it-yourself TiVo?

[Peyna]

I'd recommend Hauppage [hauppage.com] over ATI's AIW or Tv Wonder

So, is it obsolete yet?

[__aatgod8309]

I'd be curious to know when this review was written. The review date given is July 3rd 2004, but it states "The driver CD comes with CATALYST 4.0, RemoteWonder 1.6, MMC 8.1 and an up to date version of ATI's DVD decoder. 4.4, 2.3 and 9.0 are available respectively, so a quick trip to ATI's website will get you current."

The current Catalyst version is 4.6 [ati.com] (posted on June 9th, almost a month ago), and i think with the average time between Catalyst releases being around a month (i'm sure someone can correct me if i'm wrong - probably loudly, and with much flaming) that would make the review a month or two old... (and there are newer versions of RemoteWonder (2.3.0.1 [ati.com] posted 3/19/04) and MMC (9.1 [ati.com], posted 06/24/04) as well.)

And yes, i'm well aware i'm being difficult, pedantic and/or contrary.

Better solution for XPC -

[Proudrooster]

Since most XPC's have 2 slots (AGP + PCI) to me this makes more sense.
For a Dual Display with Video Capture, get this combo.

• Hauppage PVR-250 [newegg.com]
• ATI RADEON 9600SE Video Card, 128MB DDR, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP [newegg.com]

For triple display, Dual VGA and TV Set, with FM radio get this combo.

• Hauppage PVR-350 [newegg.com]
• ATI RADEON 9600SE Video Card, 128MB DDR, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP [newegg.com]

I was hoping to see more discussion on this thread. I have an XPC and am borrowing a PVR-250 and it works really well. Only a 10-20% hit on a 3.0GHz CPU when recording at DVD quality. To stress the system I started 3 FTP downloads (3 MB/s), started burning a CD, streamied a 128k station with Winamp, editing pics with Adobe Photoshop, watched previously recorded show, and recorded TV with the Hauppage card. The system worked fine. I thought for sure that the single IDE disk would bottleneck, but no problems.

IMHO, the ATI AIW 9600XT is out because it doesn't have hardware MPEG compression and it has another fan to make noise. I think the playback with the AIW is easier on the CPU since the overlay happens on the card, however recording must hammer the system CPU . Can anyone tell us what CPU/Disk I/O look like while recording at DVD quality on the ATI?

Re:Hardware encoding

[Anonymous Coward]

e-home OEM at newegg for $64 [newegg.com] yay internet

not an ATI card

[juventasone]

I can't believe no slashdotters have pointed out timothy's mistake of calling it "ATi's newest All-In-Wonder". This is not an ATI card, it is a GeCube card. The reviewer gets it right in all occasions, as does the poster. ATI does indeed make All-In-Wonders, but they don't make them all. While I see this mistake all the time, I don't expect it from any self-respecting geek with any hardware knowledge.

Re:Hardware encoding

[Mycroft_VIII]

I harware encoding is available on some AIW products. The 9600 has it.
If you goto ati's site and use thier 'product compare' [ati.com] feature it shows 9600 and higher as doing encoding with hardware. But not all AIW radeon models are available to compare.

Mycroft