The New Theater 650 TV Tuner Solution from ATI
by Josh Venning on June 14, 2006 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
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Image and Video Quality
Probably the most subjective yet important element of a TV tuner card is its ability to play and record high quality video. There are many factors involved in determining how good the video quality is and certain things like sharpness can be good or bad depending on user preference. That's why it's nice that ATI has added more user control over this and other aspects of image quality through the new software with the Theater 650.
ATI provided us with a DVD that contains some test videos to compare image quality between these three cards. To allay any suspicions of foul play, these test videos were created by SMPTE (the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) for the express purpose of testing analog television quality. These videos include still and moving images to test how well a tuner applies things like sharpness and noise reduction. We recorded all of the tests with each of the tuners to provide a consistent test video for comparison between cards, and you can download the complete videos using your favorite BitTorrent client. (Total size of the three videos is 345 MB.) Note that we used ATI's AVIVO utility to convert all of the files to MPEG-4 format from the default MCE .ms MPEG-2 format. This was done to reduce file size, and we did verify that there was no discernible change in image quality (the original files totaled over 1 GB in size). In order to avoid any errors in our own analysis, we used the original files while drawing our conclusions.
It is also important to point out that we didn't just run a DVD player straight into a composite video input. We ran our DVD player through a modulator set up to output on channel 3. This way were were able to provide each card with a source data in the same format as if the images were broadcast and recieved over a cable connection. Feeding in analog video directly would bypass the tuner and demodulator on the card and wouldn't present a full test of the hardware, but our solution gives us the ability to repeat tests easily using a reliable source. The images below are taken from the original video files.
As we mentioned in the introduction, ATI has improved their 3D comb filter with the Theater 650 over the 550 by making it motion adaptive. This means that moving objects will be much cleaner and sharper compared to those without this feature. As you can see in the above images, the fruit in the Theater 650 capture looks similar to the 550, but the color is cleaner, especially near the edges of the tomato. You can also see that the DualTV has some problems with displaying the edges of the tomato and stand properly while in motion. This is one case where we see a clear improvement by ATI over NVIDIA in image quality.
In the above images, we can also see how there is slightly more detail in certain areas of the test pattern with the Theater 650 compared to the 550, and both are ahead of the DualTV. The loss of detail is noticeable near the upper and lower right hand corners of the image where some of the fine lines tend to blur together. There are also fewer color artifacts with the Theater 650 due to its higher quality 3D comb filter.
As a final example, we can see the difference in the color between the Theater 650 and 550 in these images, and the 650 gives the woman's skin tones a better treatment. There isn't a very big difference here between the Theater 650 and DualTV but you can see how the colors are generally brighter on the Theater 650 due to the new automatic color control.
These are only some of the tests on the DVD (there are eight tests in all) which demonstrate the Theater 650's better overall image quality than the 550. From these results we can definitely see how ATI has improved over the 550 as well the DualTV with their new Theater card.
Probably the most subjective yet important element of a TV tuner card is its ability to play and record high quality video. There are many factors involved in determining how good the video quality is and certain things like sharpness can be good or bad depending on user preference. That's why it's nice that ATI has added more user control over this and other aspects of image quality through the new software with the Theater 650.
ATI provided us with a DVD that contains some test videos to compare image quality between these three cards. To allay any suspicions of foul play, these test videos were created by SMPTE (the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) for the express purpose of testing analog television quality. These videos include still and moving images to test how well a tuner applies things like sharpness and noise reduction. We recorded all of the tests with each of the tuners to provide a consistent test video for comparison between cards, and you can download the complete videos using your favorite BitTorrent client. (Total size of the three videos is 345 MB.) Note that we used ATI's AVIVO utility to convert all of the files to MPEG-4 format from the default MCE .ms MPEG-2 format. This was done to reduce file size, and we did verify that there was no discernible change in image quality (the original files totaled over 1 GB in size). In order to avoid any errors in our own analysis, we used the original files while drawing our conclusions.
It is also important to point out that we didn't just run a DVD player straight into a composite video input. We ran our DVD player through a modulator set up to output on channel 3. This way were were able to provide each card with a source data in the same format as if the images were broadcast and recieved over a cable connection. Feeding in analog video directly would bypass the tuner and demodulator on the card and wouldn't present a full test of the hardware, but our solution gives us the ability to repeat tests easily using a reliable source. The images below are taken from the original video files.
T650:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
T550:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
DualTV:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
As we mentioned in the introduction, ATI has improved their 3D comb filter with the Theater 650 over the 550 by making it motion adaptive. This means that moving objects will be much cleaner and sharper compared to those without this feature. As you can see in the above images, the fruit in the Theater 650 capture looks similar to the 550, but the color is cleaner, especially near the edges of the tomato. You can also see that the DualTV has some problems with displaying the edges of the tomato and stand properly while in motion. This is one case where we see a clear improvement by ATI over NVIDIA in image quality.
T650:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
T550:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
DualTV:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
In the above images, we can also see how there is slightly more detail in certain areas of the test pattern with the Theater 650 compared to the 550, and both are ahead of the DualTV. The loss of detail is noticeable near the upper and lower right hand corners of the image where some of the fine lines tend to blur together. There are also fewer color artifacts with the Theater 650 due to its higher quality 3D comb filter.
T650:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
T550:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
DualTV:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
As a final example, we can see the difference in the color between the Theater 650 and 550 in these images, and the 650 gives the woman's skin tones a better treatment. There isn't a very big difference here between the Theater 650 and DualTV but you can see how the colors are generally brighter on the Theater 650 due to the new automatic color control.
These are only some of the tests on the DVD (there are eight tests in all) which demonstrate the Theater 650's better overall image quality than the 550. From these results we can definitely see how ATI has improved over the 550 as well the DualTV with their new Theater card.
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soulader - Monday, October 6, 2008 - link
Does anyone know if Theater 650 PRO support time shifting?? pause live tv etc..thank you.
madprof - Saturday, February 2, 2008 - link
Apart from being able to input tv signals, does this card not allow for the output of video back to the tv? i.e. playing an avi movie on the aux input of the tvJustJack - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
A lot of people seem to like the Hauppauge cards, but I will tell you that if they dont come out with 64 bit drivers for the 250 for Vista, I will never buy another Hauppauge card! I think that XP Pro 64 bit has been out for over a year and they still dont have drivers for that version. The only Vista 64 bit drivers are for the 150/500.edlight - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
You get a TV card to watch TV and hope it will make something fine out of the dirty cable signal (that's what those new filters are for) and will pull in DTV well.Instead we read about how it does with a DVD. No way.
Please, think.
jonp - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
It's August 8th and I can't find any 650 tuner cards anywhere that are available. Does anyone (AT included) know when they (from any producer, ati, sapphire, msi...) are going to become available? Every article on the web said July. Hope this isn't more vaporware. Jontoddbailey - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
I get all of 3 hdtv channels ota, big deal. I get more via satellite.But can I record any of them onto my PC? Oh Hell NO! When are the people who make this stuff going to build something I can actually use? I and very possibly several others want a device to capture component, rgb, dvi or hdmi video signals. The closest I found is component to sdi on firewire, but sad to say it's only ntsc resolution.
For those who have capture via firewire, more power to you, But for my service (no cable tv available in my area), Dish network doesn't offer this capability.
any one want to em me in person ? talk to me at toddb@toddbailey.net
thanks
Wellsoul2 - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
Hi,I have the ATI HDTV wonder tuner card and it works fine.
Excellent 1080i picture from ATSC tuner. Easylook software ok.
Remote ok. Works fine with ATItools and updated drivers etc.
Runs fine with 9600XT and 146Opteron.
What software/hardware will give me better experience with OTA ATSC?
Forget NTSC..I have ancient Hauppauge cards that do it fine.
Why should I spend more money and what benefit?
I don't care about qam or Windews Megamedia monopoly..
For free I already get a great HDTV picture OTA. Maybe I could use hardware
encoding or filtering on DVD's.
Paid $75 for a used HDTV wonder with Antenna and remote..why pay more?
Also..what is DVD/HDTV benefit upgrading video card?
SOme say 1600 ATI only does 780p and you need 1800plus to do 1080i..
WHat does this mean? will it really help my OTA HDTV experience?
millerbrad - Monday, June 19, 2006 - link
http://www.atitech.ca/products/theater650pro/specs...">The specs on ATIs website indicate that this cards uses 720x480 MPEG-2 compression.Does this mean that the cards won't actually output 720p or 1080i resolutions when watching digital television?
Wellsoul2 - Wednesday, June 28, 2006 - link
It seems to say it does hardware MPEG2 compression at that resolution.ATI's info is not great but my lowly HDTV Wonder card does software
compression in MPEG4 at a higher resolution so I assume this card
will do SOFTWARE compression at higher resolutions for recordings.
Yes..you can definitely watch at 1080i..it's referring to recordings to your
hard drive.
It probably also does time shifting and recording HDTV since my older
HDTV wonder will do that. You take a hit with software encoding since
your CPU does it.
Hopefully Anandtech can explain this further since I am a novice.
MrJim - Saturday, June 17, 2006 - link
Is there a cheap good Tv-card which has both hardware encoder/decoder?