Radeon 8500DV (Finally)

[cjyo~]

I've been waiting for manufacturers to add 1394 for ages. Save a PCI slot! Let's hope others join the party. And cross your fingers on those drivers...
Radeon 8500DV

BTW, sorry to keep posting about non-Matrox stuff, but it seems relevant. (I'm still shopping for that G200 Marvel replacement...)

[Dr Mordrid]

I don't mind at all. In fact I'm glad you mentioned it.

I first suggested a mixed-media capture card to *A CERTAIN COMPANY* several months ago, as in last year when the DV.nowAV first came out. I tried again when ATI started dabbling in DV with the DV Wonder and brought it up again recently.

The following specs are what I had in mind;

TV tuner

OHCI IEEE-1394 built in

Support for the following frame modes;

352x240, 352x480, 480x480, 704x480 & 720x480 + 576 high for PAL & SECAM

analog & TV capture to YUY2, RGB, MPEG in all modes

analog & TV capture to DV @ 720x480/576

the ability to use soft codecs (HuffYUV, PICVideo etc.) in its capture utility.

DV encoder chip built in (for realtime transcoding of analog & TV captures to DV and back & for exporting)

Their product managers & marketing types apparently passed on it. Their loss.

Dr. Mordrid

[cjyo~]

You snooze, you lose. Or maybe there's some serious Canadian espionage going on there. Looks like Nvidia may have missed the DV boat too (with Personal Cinema). Anyway, things are looking up for us lowly consumers.

It's funny how Matrox decided to get out of the cutting-edge 3D gaming enthusiast market, then the others slowly encroach on their turf (high quality 2D, dual display, video editing, etc)...

Capture formats: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DV, WMF

Connectors:

• Hardware support for component video output via DVI-I to YPrPb dongle
• DVI-I (VGA adaptor included)
• Stereo audio, S-video and composite video inputs
• S-video and composite video outputs
• External stereo connection to sound card’s line input
• Dolby® digital stereo audio output (S/PDIF)
• Two external IEEE 1394 ports

Here's a better link, the 8500DV product page:

Radeon 8500DV

Personal Cinema / 8500DV comparison

FAQ

[Elie]

I'd love to see a Marvel or any other cards like it with component out!!

Component is so much better with cleaner signal and sharper picture quality, due to true colour seperation.
My Hitachi I just bought does have component in (R-G-B) and would love to take advantage of that especially for DVD playback
Imagine if you are outputing DV captured footage? the quality would be simply outstanding.

[Dr Mordrid]

I didn't say it was Matrox. Whatever gave you that idea?

Of course Elie knows all the gory details, but he's sworn to secrecy....I think

Yes, component I/O would be a great idea.

Dr. Mordrid

[Elie]

Yes, hehe my lips are always sealed

[Jerry Jones]

I find the ATI card to be very, very interesting.

I wonder what the street price will be?

[DrBoB]

Did anyone else notice that the component video upgrade goes on the DVI connector, therefore meaning that you can't have a monitor connected at the same time?

[Dr Mordrid]

The price I saw quoted was an MSRP of under $500 USD.

Dr. Mordrid

[cjyo~]

Dual display

Originally posted by DrBoB
Did anyone else notice that the component video upgrade goes on the DVI connector, therefore meaning that you can't have a monitor connected at the same time?

You can have a VGA monitor and DVI (or TV) connected at the same time with "Hydravision," which is ATI's wanna-be dual-head dual display feature. See the "Hydravision" description on the product page.

---

About pricing, they say MSRP less than $500 in the press release, but I think Nvidia Personal Cinema is supposed to be $50 more than whatever card it's on. The Geforce3 is around $300, right now, so that makes $350. The thing is, I think Nvidia will lower prices a bit when the 8500 is released. They will also probably introduce new cards, like a Geforce3 Ultra and Geforce3 MX, soon, pushing prices down.

My guess would be the $300- $350 range within a couple months of release. (If I remember correctly, the Marvel G200 was near $300 when I bought it...)

[EvilDonnyboy]

I sure hope ATi figures out how to let both displays have their own res/refresh.

[Ghydda]

Oh my god! That ATI-card does have a very nice featurelist...
Can't wait to see how it retails ($$$) in my country.


Ghydda

[Jerry Jones]

Does anybody know if this hydravision feature works as well as Matrox's dual head technology?

What I'm driving at is this:

If used in conjunction with next year's MediaStudio Pro 7.0 - *some* of these new generation display cards with TV out will take full advantage of Ulead's evolving "Instant Playback" feature to provide a real time preview to an external TV monitor.

Currently - in the new 6.5 version of MediaStudio - this feature utilizes Video for Windows (no output to TV).

But Ulead engineers are confident they can switch this over to Microsoft Direct Show (yes - output to TV) by the time MediaStudio Pro 7.0 is ready to hit the market.

This - in effect - would make it unnecessary to buy one of these real-time-to-analog-out boards such as

*Canopus RaptorRT
*Pinnacle DV500
*Pinnacle ProOne

...etc...

So how about it?

Anybody know if ATI's card would be able to take advantage of this?

The great thing about Ulead's new Instant Playback feature is that all titles, transitions, audio, filters playback in real time - and not just a few "canned" or "special" ones as is the case with many of today's so-called real time boards.

[jeepman]

I have known about the card for over three months but I couldn't say anything. I discovered its existance on accident when reviewing some SPR's at work! I figured if we had it, we were under NDA.

Anyways, I definitely will try and get one of these. Too bad I have already bought a Pyro 1394DV PCI card. I guess I can always "EBay" it.

[Hulk]

8500DV needs two things for me to buy it:

1. TV out must overscan, that is, not black border around the image like the current AIW solutions.

2. A feature like DVD max.