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2D
Visuals / Video Quality
2D
Image quality was good. I noticed a subtle difference after installation (I was
switching from a Voodoo5).
I generally run my desktop at 1280 x 1024
and I feel the 350mhz RAMDAC on the Voodoo5 gave
it a slight edge in image quality over the
300mhz RAMDAC of the All-In-Wonder at this
particular resolution.
The All In Wonder's image quality is not
sub-par my any means. I have just grown
accustomed to something different.
Now
let’s get to some points where this card
really shines.
There are applications for video editing,
TV-Tuning, CD-Audio and DVD playback all
included. Most
of them you may have seen before. I used
them in the ATI
Xpert 2000 review from a while back.
One
of the tools obviously missing from the Xpert
series of cards is the TV-Tuner.
The interface for ATI’s TV-Tuner is
EXCELLENT.
It
is very easy to use and yet very powerful and
offers great image quality.
We have a Hauppauge Win-TV PCI installed
in our system and have used the 3dfx / STB
Desktop TV as well.
Having used both of those other cards, I
can say in this reviewer’s opinion is that the
ATI TV-Tuner far surpasses them both in both
quality and features. A few features especially impressed me.
First,
this may be a little tough to visualize, and I
couldn’t take any screenshots to show this off
but when switching to a full screen mode, you
can effectively set the TV as your background
and have your desktop icons and taskbar etc.
still there for normal operation.
Another
great feature is something ATI calls “TV
Magazine”.
The TV Magazine takes closed captions and
creates transcripts while taking screenshots
along the way, sort of like a script with
pictures…very cool stuff. You can also have it notify you if a specific word is spoken.
Capture
quality from the TV or A/V inputs is also
excellent.
There is one drawback though.
The Rage Theater chip mounted on the
board handles video capture, but compression is
not done in hardware. Ligos GoMotion software
encoder is used for this and it is fairly
processor dependant.
It will “work” on a CPU as slow as a
Pentium 200, but a PIII is recommended for the
high-end 720 x 480 capture if you don’t want
to drop any frames.
The
“digital VCR” is also very easy to use, and
allows you to set start and stop record times
just like a regular VCR we all have connected to
our TV’s.
Depending on what level of compression
you choose, 7 hours of VCR quality video can be
stored in 5GB if space or 3 hours of DVD quality
MPEG 2 video in that same 5GB.
Speaking
of DVD quality, ATI has no equal.
Dave and I have said it before and I’ll
say it again.
The DVD playback and quality of ATI’s
hardware acceleration is second to none and only
rivaled by a true add-in hardware decoder card.
A screenshot really
does not do this card justice.
ATI’s DVD playback is something that
has to be seen to be truly appreciate.
However, just for a taste (and a laugh) he’s
a quick shot from the movie “Dogma”…
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