ATI AIW 9800 Pro: Still possible? (2 Viewers)

[CrazyJew89]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1.3 / Newest
MediaPortal Skin: Default
Windows Version: XP Pro SP3
CPU Type: ADM Athlon XP 3200+
HDD: 40GB (Brand: forgot)
Memory: 512MB x 2 DDR (Corsair)
Motherboard: Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
Video Card: ATI 9800 Pro AIW
Video Card Driver: Ver: 6.14.10.6462 (ATI)
Sound Card: Onboard (nForce 2)
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver: Legacy Audio Drivers
1. TV Card: On GPU
1. TV Card Type: Analog
1. TV Card Driver: Ver: 6.14.10.6238 (ATI: 3-18-04)
MPEG2 Video Codec: Unknown
MPEG2 Audio Codec: Unknown
h.264 Video Codec: Unknown
Satelite/CableTV Provider: Wow
HTPC Case: Standard Tower
Cooling: Stock
Power Supply: Thermaltake 480W
Remote: None
TV: Sylvania CRT something
TV - HTPC Connection: RCA (Red, White, Yellow)


Alright guys, I know that ATI AIW cards have been beaten to death on this forum but there is nothing terribly clear about how to do this, or anything that I can find is not up to date on this subject (2006-2007 Ver: 0.2.x) so please bear with me.

I have an old desktop of mine that is my old gaming computer. We recently got cable and I now got this crazy dream in my head of using it as a HTPC with DVR capabilities.

I have already wiped the HDD several time just trying to get windows installed (turns out dust buildup on the CPU heatsink can do weird things and make it overheat). Anyways I am not afraid of doing another wipe and install of anything that works I just would like to get it right this time. I have copies of 98, XP, Vista, and 7 that I can install, but from what I have gathered XP is going to be the most compatible.

So if I have read everything right these are the steps I should follow:

1) Format drive and install XP
2) Perform all windows updates
3) Install Windows hotfix found in MCE (Forgot which one it is, it's mentioned on the forum)
4) Install Video and TV Card drivers (Which ones should I be using?)
5) Install MP
6) Several modifications have been mentioned for once at this point such as modifying the XML file and manually adding atimcenc.dll. Which of these are still relevant and should be applied if any?

I am currently at a point where MP recognizes the TV Tuner but will not pick up the channels when a channel scan is performed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Tesla]

I had a AIW9600 in my first MP build.

Use XP. Pick an older ATI CCC from those days and the matching ATI-MMC. Get that working. According to my notes, I used Catalyst 8.12 . The TV device part and capture will require the matching MMC software.

I'm pretty sure MP needs a TV card with hardware decoding and those old ATI AIWers are software only. All I could get working properly is MP and launch MMC-TV as an external app (to watch TV).

If your cable system still delivers analog cable (ch 2-125) and that's all you want, you can get a Hauppage 250 cheap on eBay. It will work fine with MP. If you want clear-QAM or ASTC, get a newer or current one. You can still use the AIW as a plain ATI-9800 video card only. I think a H-350 will do digital.

My brother still uses the MP box described above (with ATI-9600 and Hauppauge-250). He does mp3, WAV, JPG pics, AVI, and VIDEO_TS folder DVD rips (with DD5.1 sound). It's some old AMD chip (runs like a 2.4ghz Pentium 4) with 1gb RAM. It has a ChainTech optical digital audio out card to run audio directly to amp (you need that for DD5.1 and even the 2 channel stereo stuff sounds better).

 

[mbuzina]

If the system is powerful enough mp can use a sw encoding card. It is often hard to set up.

 

[CrazyJew89]

I had a AIW9600 in my first MP build.

Use XP. Pick an older ATI CCC from those days and the matching ATI-MMC. Get that working. According to my notes, I used Catalyst 8.12 . The TV device part and capture will require the matching MMC software.

I'm pretty sure MP needs a TV card with hardware decoding and those old ATI AIWers are software only. All I could get working properly is MP and launch MMC-TV as an external app (to watch TV).

If your cable system still delivers analog cable (ch 2-125) and that's all you want, you can get a Hauppage 250 cheap on eBay. It will work fine with MP. If you want clear-QAM or ASTC, get a newer or current one. You can still use the AIW as a plain ATI-9800 video card only. I think a H-350 will do digital.

Ya, I was just hoping to use what I have and not buy anything new. I have never been a fan of the ATI software but that may have to be the route I go.

If the system is powerful enough mp can use a sw encoding card. It is often hard to set up.

Thats what I thought. It is an old system but it can run quite a lot, I could also add some RAM I have laying around and overclock it if needed. Does anyone have any idea how to set it up with SW encoding?

 

[mbuzina]

Its in the wiki:
Software Encoding Card Setup - MediaPortal Wiki

 

[CrazyJew89]

Its in the wiki:
Software Encoding Card Setup - MediaPortal Wiki

Sweet! I don't know how I missed this when I was going through the wiki before, but thanks for pointing it out.

Hope this works.

 

[Tesla]

Its in the wiki:
Software Encoding Card Setup - MediaPortal Wiki

Sweet! I don't know how I missed this when I was going through the wiki before, but thanks for pointing it out.

Hope this works.

Right. But if you read it, it says what I already posted ...

Install a working CCC from that time frame (when the card was popular).
Install the matching ATI MMC software (for TV and Capture)
... then see if MP TV Server will detect the tuner.

IIRC, when you install MMC, if you have the original AIW setup disc ... it will ask for it to be inserted for validation. If you pass, it will let you download and install the (ATI branded) PowerDVD CSS codec and player. I think this "kicks-in" the hardware DVD decoder on the card (saves some CPU cycles). But that's for DVDs ... not the TV Tuner.

Hopefully, you can get MP-TV to work, but if not ... opening MMC-ATI-TV on top of MP isn't too bad. MP does so much more than TV. Plus, a lot of TV has moved to the Internet ... so you can get it that way also (no TV tuner required).

 

[mm1352000]

Right. But if you read it, it says what I already posted ...

Install a working CCC from that time frame (when the card was popular).
Install the matching ATI MMC software (for TV and Capture)
... then see if MP TV Server will detect the tuner.

IIRC, when you install MMC, if you have the original AIW setup disc ... it will ask for it to be inserted for validation. If you pass, it will let you download and install the (ATI branded) PowerDVD CSS codec and player. I think this "kicks-in" the hardware DVD decoder on the card (saves some CPU cycles). But that's for DVDs ... not the TV Tuner.

As long as the tuner doesn't require a cable connection to the soundcard (some old cards required this) then it should work fine. In that case you could install the far more up to date AVIVO package. I *highly* recommend the ATI encoders from AVIVO. They seem to be very stable and the CPU requirements are very reasonable. See here for a comparison of software encoders. I'd encourage you to upgrade to 1.2.0a (or 1.2.0b when it is released) because analog tuner support has been *greatly* improved...