ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV
One Card, a multitude of technology

By Dave Altavilla
12/26/01
 

The AIW R8500DV has a comprehensive array of ATi "home grown" software tools and utilities that provide user control and interface to its impressive A/V capabilities.  Here's a look at of few of the toys at your disposal.

Software and A/V Features
It's got it all

ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV - Tool Bar, CD Player and Video CD Player:

 

 

ATi's tool-bar and audio players have buttons and controls that are very intuitive.  Users  are treated with a sleek high tech look with easy to read controls.  However, we hope that ATi will consider the possible addition of "skins" technology to their player interfaces.  Not that we didn't like the look of these, actually they were some of the nicest we've seen to date from any OEM, however it might be nice to be able to change up the look and feel once in a while, just to keep things fresh on the desktop.
 

DVD Player and TV Tuning, Programming, and Capture Features:


 

 

 

     

  Gemstar Guide Plus (click image)
 

The DVD and TV Players utilize the same basic interface as the CD Player.  There are various video-centric features that are implemented here obviously, like screen aspect ratio and still captures.  We should also point out that ATi's version of "TV On Demand" time shifting technology, worked flawlessly.  It automatically records video data from the TV Tuner in MPEG 1 or 2 format.  For reference, you can get 7 hours of MPEG1 or 3 hours of MPEG2 video on about 5 Gigs of storage.  It worked very well and we were more than impressed with the simple one touch pause and play interface.  Another nice touch was the integration of Gemstar's "Guide Plus" software for programming guide functionality driven via an internet connection.  Users can look at the programming guide and when a show is clicked on in the window, a small preview picture in picture window is displayed of the program in progress.  Users can then switch to the active program of their choice.



Channel Surfing (click image)
 

    

The channel surfing feature of the AIW R8500DV, is a fairly standard issue nicety found in most TV Tuner offerings in the market.  ATi's version is comparable to this.  There is also a Stills Image Gallery control panel (top left) that allows you to work with various screen captures you may have taken from TV, DVD or other input sources like Camcorders etc.

 

Video Editing Software:

Finally, Unlead Studio's Video Studio 5 is the chosen Video Editing software in this package.  This suite is fairly powerful and easy to use.  It provides the tools required for most Digital Video Editing tasks.  Once again, ATi didn't skimp on the trimmings.

 

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