Asus A33 DAV

Hi,

I just picked up an ASUS A33 DAV center on Ebay. It is a compact unit
with a built it in sound system and two tuner cards. It isn't all
that well powered for HD, but to be honest, I'm not all that concerned
with that. Mainly I want it for it's DVR capabilities and SD is fine
for me, really.

Here's the thing, it shipped with no OS. It has HDMI and S-Video
outputs, but no SVGA out. I'm not sure how I'm going to get this
thing built. Plugging in the S-Video into my TV gives me no signal,
and I'm guessing HDMI will do the same. It seems like the system
needs an OS before it will know how to run those other outputs...but I
can't get the OS going until I can see what the thing is doing.

If anyone has any experience working with these, or any insight, I'd
greatly appreciate it!

Thanks so much in advance.


Dave

ChicagoDave wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just picked up an ASUS A33 DAV center on Ebay. It is a compact unit
> with a built it in sound system and two tuner cards. It isn't all
> that well powered for HD, but to be honest, I'm not all that concerned
> with that. Mainly I want it for it's DVR capabilities and SD is fine
> for me, really.
>
> Here's the thing, it shipped with no OS. It has HDMI and S-Video
> outputs, but no SVGA out. I'm not sure how I'm going to get this
> thing built. Plugging in the S-Video into my TV gives me no signal,
> and I'm guessing HDMI will do the same. It seems like the system
> needs an OS before it will know how to run those other outputs...but I
> can't get the OS going until I can see what the thing is doing.
>
> If anyone has any experience working with these, or any insight, I'd
> greatly appreciate it!
>
> Thanks so much in advance.
>
>
> Dave

According to the specs, it uses Windows Vista Home Premium. Sounds like
it's supposed to come installed on the unit. The link below loads a
flash program that gives you the info for the A33 (links at the bottom):
http://event.asus.com/2007/DigitalHome/A33/EN/

ChicagoDave wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just picked up an ASUS A33 DAV center on Ebay. It is a compact unit
> with a built it in sound system and two tuner cards. It isn't all
> that well powered for HD, but to be honest, I'm not all that concerned
> with that. Mainly I want it for it's DVR capabilities and SD is fine
> for me, really.
>
> Here's the thing, it shipped with no OS. It has HDMI and S-Video
> outputs, but no SVGA out. I'm not sure how I'm going to get this
> thing built. Plugging in the S-Video into my TV gives me no signal,
> and I'm guessing HDMI will do the same. It seems like the system
> needs an OS before it will know how to run those other outputs...but I
> can't get the OS going until I can see what the thing is doing.
>
> If anyone has any experience working with these, or any insight, I'd
> greatly appreciate it!
>
> Thanks so much in advance.
>
>
> Dave

Hmmm. Only one manual offered, and it is "Traditional_Chinese_Manual.zip".
The pickings are pretty slim looking. Almost like this was intended for
their home market.

http://support.asus.com/download/dow...n-us&model=A33

But all is not lost. Go here. (Note - packet loss to Asia is high right
now, causing the download rate with this particular server, to be crappy.
Use this directory, just to get some file names. Don't try to download
stuff here.)

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/

Then, tack the name of the file, like "MCE_Ext_V104.zip", onto the
link the regular download server would use. This might run faster.
I tried this one, and it worked. (Inside the ZIP, it says "Vista"
and it is a multi-language installer.)

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/Dig...E_Ext_V104.zip

Since I don't read Chinese, traditional or otherwise, I can only
go by the smell of what is in that download directory. It
uses Vista MCE, so either there is a Vista CD in the box, or
you provide some version of Vista that has MCE separately. I
see two pieces of media shown as part of the package, so look
for your CD/DVDs.

If the machine has a BIOS, it should be displaying a 640x480 BIOS
screen on some output. It doesn't have to be completely dead
at startup.

Just a guess,
Paul

I figured it out. The bios was set to using PCI-Express video, not
the onboard. I didn't have a pci-e video card, but once I went out
and got it, I was able to see and it worked fine.

I have Windows 7 loaded on it right now and it works pretty darned
well. It detected the Tuners and found the channels great. The guide
for LiveTV is pretty out of whack, doesn't show the right listings
anywhere, so that will be tonight's adventure. HD channels are as
expected, kind of jittery, but the SD stuff is stellar.

I'll probably going the Vista route, as that's what this box was
designed for, but so far I'm really pleased with this first time
around.

On Mar 25, 8:50*am, ChicagoDave <lyricsandb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I figured it out. *The bios was set to using PCI-Express video, not
> the onboard. *I didn't have a pci-e video card, but once I went out
> and got it, I was able to see and it worked fine.
>
> I have Windows 7 loaded on it right now and it works pretty darned
> well. *It detected the Tuners and found the channels great. *The guide
> for LiveTV is pretty out of whack, doesn't show the right listings
> anywhere, so that will be tonight's adventure. *HD channels are as
> expected, kind of jittery, but the SD stuff is stellar.
>
> I'll probably going the Vista route, as that's what this box was
> designed for, but so far I'm really pleased with this first time
> around.

I'm having trouble installing drivers for ASUS 33 DAV I used Vista
Ultimate. In device manager i see 2 Video driver entry and 2 unknown
devices. I need help finding correct drivers and installing them. the
AV controller is not working either. I dont have HDMI on my TV, and
svideo looks very bad on my tv. please help

> I'm having trouble installing drivers for ASUS 33 DAV I used Vista
> Ultimate. In device manager i see 2 Video driver entry and 2 unknown
> devices. I need help finding correct drivers and installing them. the
> AV controller is not working either. I dont have HDMI on my TV, and
> svideo looks very bad on my tv. please help

I was able to run straight video out from the yellow jack into the
game port on my regular TV and it looked okay when it played video,
but was pretty horrific in terms of computer display. Running
component and HDMI was okay with native drivers - but once I
downloaded the Nvidia drivers it looked stellar.

Now I've found a couple of other issues. One, this box runs REALLY
hot. An inch or two above the top of the machine isn't enough.
Likely this box won't be able to be in the cabinet at all (which
defeats the purpose), and I'll likely need to either mod out the fans
and CPU heatsink. The HDMI also only worked for about a day at which
point it only displayed black or purple psychadelic colors. Component
works well for video, but I can't get sound working now.

Frankly, I'm suspecting I'm going to just salvage the tuner cards,
hard drive, memory I purchased, and move on viewing this as moderately
expensive lesson in buying things 'as is'.

ChicagoDave wrote:
>> I'm having trouble installing drivers for ASUS 33 DAV I used Vista
>> Ultimate. In device manager i see 2 Video driver entry and 2 unknown
>> devices. I need help finding correct drivers and installing them. the
>> AV controller is not working either. I dont have HDMI on my TV, and
>> svideo looks very bad on my tv. please help
>
> I was able to run straight video out from the yellow jack into the
> game port on my regular TV and it looked okay when it played video,
> but was pretty horrific in terms of computer display. Running
> component and HDMI was okay with native drivers - but once I
> downloaded the Nvidia drivers it looked stellar.
>
> Now I've found a couple of other issues. One, this box runs REALLY
> hot. An inch or two above the top of the machine isn't enough.
> Likely this box won't be able to be in the cabinet at all (which
> defeats the purpose), and I'll likely need to either mod out the fans
> and CPU heatsink. The HDMI also only worked for about a day at which
> point it only displayed black or purple psychadelic colors. Component
> works well for video, but I can't get sound working now.
>
> Frankly, I'm suspecting I'm going to just salvage the tuner cards,
> hard drive, memory I purchased, and move on viewing this as moderately
> expensive lesson in buying things 'as is'.

Nvidia had an underfill problem with their GPUS.
The failure of your HDMI, could be related to a chip failure.
You'd have to trace down the Nvidia component, to see whether
it is one of the affected ones.

http://legacy.macnn.com/print/60132
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10119277-64.html

So what you're seeing, might not be an "ordinary" electrical
failure of some HDMI signals. It could be a connection
failure at the GPU.

Paul

avakhnin wrote:
> i have Asus a33 running vista premium MCE. I get video over HDMI to my
> TV but no audio. when i try using analog RCA i get very low sound. In
> device manager i see that driver is installed. Any suggestions? Any body
> else experience same problem? Installing PCI sound card is an option?
> any suggestion on cheap sound card what would work with my setup. Thanks
>
>

Download directory.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/DigitalHome/DAV/A33/

User manual (as far as I know, only a Chinese manual is available).

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/Digit...ese_Manual.zip

See PDF page 32, for a picture of the control panel to enable
audio over HDMI. I can't read Chinese, so I can't help you more than
that.

Paul