ATI Radeon 9800 pro vs ATI AIW 9800 pro ???

I'm a newby to higher end video cards and am in the middle of ordering
parts for a new PC. Am going with a SATA 7200 rpm 120 gig drive, and 1
gig of memory, with a P4 2.8 ghz. Of course, a DVD burner, too.
Moherboard is a Gigabyte with 800 mhz bus, and onboard USB2 and
Firewire, plus on-board audio, and AGP slot, plus PCI slots and on-board
NIC.

So, for the Video card... while TV, etc sounds like fun, it's not
paramount. I would like to try a few games, but that's not the big deal,
either. What I want is a good way to capture all my old VHS tapes (not
S-video) of my kids, etc, and edit them down to some more watchable
DVD's. Of course, two monitors on my PC would be nice, and I would like
to play an occasional game, like I said.

I'm so new that I didn't even know there WAS a difference between ATI
Radeon 9800 pro and AIW 9800 pro (could they MAKE their naming
convention more confusing???) until today. I finally have the XT, Pro,
Plain and SE thing down. So, what do I want if I want to produce some
decent video that's full screen and full speed. (in other words, looks a
LOT like it does on the original VHS tapes.)

The problem with reviews on all this stuff is that folks who are gamers
assume that EVERYBODY is a gamer, and Video editors assume that
EVERYBODY is a video editor. I'm looking for a balance, and of course
don't REALLY want to pay for an AIW 9800 pro unless that's really what
it takes to do what I want.

Thanks to all who read this Tome.

Steve Henderson

 

you want it all video editing and dual monitors.
the best way to go is get the 9800pro so you can conect 2 monitors then get
a TV decoder card for video editing.
the AIW has built in tv card but only one monitor conection.

 

Hi

better yet, do you have a digital video camera? If you do, you'd
better use that as an encoder to encode your analogue signal (from
VCR) to digital (as an AVI file) and connect your camera to the
firewire port on your mobo. This way you do not get as much dropped
frames as you would with the AIW card.

So if you do have a digital camera I would go with the 9800pro.

cheers.

 

If you can afford it look into one of the external capture devices that
connects via a Firewire port. They appear to most video editing software
as a digital camcorder or recording deck and reduce the workload on the CPU
enormously. None of the inexpensive analog capture devices such as the AIW
that go into a PCI slot are completely satisfactory.

Canopus is probably the best known manufacturer of such devices--their
ADVC100 goes for around $300 then you need a Firewire board if you don't
already have a Firewire port--they have some PCI boards as well, but be
careful with them--some models are having a problem with Windows XP SP1
that Canopus and Microsoft are supposed to both be working on but I don't
know the status. Pinnacle has one that connects via USB2, the PCTV Deluxe,
for around $200--the Pinnacle devices are not as widely supported as the
ones that work over Firewire and their older USB devices didn't work very
well either, but the USB2 capture device might be decent and is a good deal
cheaper htan the Canopus--I've never seen any reliable feedback on it.
Many (not all--do check) digital camcorders provide the same
capability--they cost more than one of the purpose made boxes but you also
have all the features of a digital camcorder.

The nice thing about the externals is that you should be able to move them
to your next machine even if PCI and AGP are both gone, which seems to be a
possibility.

There are some inexpensive devices that give capture capability equivalent
to the All-In-Wonders--the Dvico Fusion HDTV 2 at $165 gives decent analog
capture and also gives you both analog and HD TV reception, unlike the AIW
that is analog-only--the early software was pretty dismal but they're
pretty close with the latest version. The Compro TV Gold Plus for around
$65 doesn't have the HD capability but has a newer capture chip and is
developing a good reputation. The Compro and the Dvico are both based on
relatively popular chips that have a lot of third-party support--if the
bundled software doesn't work for you you can find other products that
might do better.

The Hauppauge PVR-250 and 350 are decent, but expensive--they provide
hardware MPEG encoding and the 350 has hardware decoding as well--the
downside is that the chips they use don't allow uncompressed capture
(lurkers--this is a hardware issue--you can't fix it with drivers--if you
can find a way to get an uncompressed output out of the chips Hauppauge
uses on those boards you'll make a lot of people very happy).

 

Thanks tons to all respondents. I'm still listening if anyone else
wishes to opine. Order not yet finalized.

I originally wrote...