Generally they
all use a very similar interface which although looking
a little dated is very simple to use and
feature full. Here is an example of the DVD interface.
The CD, VCD and file player are all similar.
From each off
the applications we were able to get picture/audio
quality just as good as any other comparable application
on the internet so full marks to ATI in this
department.
One of the
greatest features of the software is the media library.
In this application you can search your PC for all
video, audio and picture files and then subsequently
access them from within the application.
The feature we found most useful was the export
function, using this you can right click the file
“select export” and then have Library
convert the file to a different format. For example
convert from ATI VCR to Mpeg2 or Avi files. This process
was very easy and only required a few mouse clicks.
Of course if
you are buying an AIW card the likelihood is you want
it for the FM tuner or TV tuner capabilities….
The FM tuner
works through the standard style MMC interface which
allows you to tune the radio with ease. When tuned
you can skip through to the channel you need with
the touch of a button as well as record broadcasts
for listening to at a later date, you can pause live
radio. As with all of the ATI MMC applications all
of the main features are available from the main oval
interface with additional functionality (or more detailed
functionality) available by right-clicking each button.
In terms of
quality the FM reception was good with no noticeable
difference over alternate PC radio tuners. (We used
a roof top antenna for our testing)
The TV application
is where we spent most of our time and as we had used
AIW’s previously we were right at home with
the application. Audio and picture quality were completely
on par with our X800GT and we could not fault the
X1800XL in either area, infact we prefer the image
created by the Radeon to that created with the Theatre
550Pro.
Throughout
our use of the product for watching and recording
TV it performed flawlessly, we experienced no quality
issues and regardless of the settings used the card
was completely stable. Trust me, we tried! Even when
we tried to tie it up in knots with fast switching
between live TV, pausing TV, recording, rewinding
and fast-forwarding to catch up with “Live”,
the AIW responded perfectly.
One area we
are still not keen on in MMC is the DVD burning functionality
within the Library application. There are still issues
with things like not checking disc space/project size
before transcoding for example. As we said previously,
for basic DVD burning its fine but for more advanced
use you should invest in a program such as Sonic MyDVD.
MMC
9.10 - Software Whats New?
The first thing
that’s noticeable about MMC 9.10 when you open
it is the lack of DTV application that was present
in MMC 9.09. With 9.10 ATI have taken the very smart
step of integrating DTV and Analogue TV in the same
application. From an end user perspective this makes
life so much easier. All of your channels regardless
of the standard are included in the same list for
example so moving from one “set” to the
other is instantaneous rather than having to close
down one application and open another.
Channel Scanning
is also improved by the amalgamation of the two applications,
so you now only have to perform a single channel scan
regardless of the number of sources. ATI also informed
us that they believe they have a real first as far
as their TV application goes. This is that TV runs
in TV-On-Demand mode at all times, even the
mulTView window runs in TV on Demand.
An additional
change around DTV is the use of TVTV for Freeview
listings, this works much smoother than the MMC 9.09
method of taking the program name from the broadcast
as this didn’t always update correctly.
Finally the
new features .... we have something which was present
in 9.09 (however we couldn’t get it to work).
Now with MMC 9.10 we have no concerns and can happily
report that you can now use your Theatre
550 Pro based TV tuners with MMC. We
can’t tell you how happy this makes us as the
software bundled with the Theatre 550 Pro (Power Cinema)
is not a patch on MMC, in fact all we could say about
PowerCinema is it is the worst we’ve ever used.
So, just to recap… MMC 9.10 is a must have download
for AIW and Theatre 550 Pro owners alike.
Analogue
Channel:
DVB-T
channel.
Here also are
the images we captured for our X800GT AIW review.
Analogue
DVB-T
|
