Black Boxes: ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV

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by Melinda Adams
Winter 2002/Spring 2003

COMPANY: ATI Technologies Inc.
CONTACT: (905) 882-3274
WEB SITE: www.ati.com
PRICE: $249

As a longtime leader in the video capture market, ATI and its All-in-Wonder video cards have provided some of the best digital/analog video tools for home and semi-pro users. For a moderate price, they've offered video buffs the ability to both capture and output video with relative ease and in excellent quality. ATI's latest issue, the Radeon 8500DV, carries on that tradition with an intuitive software interface, but at this writing the unit still has some installation issues that may require all but the most experienced PC users to seek the advice of a skilled hardware tech.

First Things First
The All-in-Wonder aspects of this card are well thought out. The breakout box, in particular, is nice and compact, and includes a FireWire connection, something typically missing from even the professional-level video capture card breakout boxes we've seen. The FireWire port worked well and was standard enough to allow us to use a FireWire hard drive, which is something other professional-level cards do not usually support. We were also impressed with the comprehensive and programmable RF remote control.

Physically installing the Radeon into our test computers' AGP ports was a snap. ATI includes a full-color, step-by-step instruction sheet to guide the process. The card includes outputs for sound and a coaxial input for cable/DSS, as well as S-video and RCA outputs to video. Since the breakout box includes audio in and out, the card connects to the sound card with a couple of cables, one of which is wired for SPDIF digital and included a passthrough attachment. We next installed the driver software on the enclosed CD, which required us to restart our test PC several times. On the final reboot, we noted that the card's color hues were vastly different than the stock AGP video card we'd been using. It took quite a bit of poking around in the ATI and Windows 2000 interfaces to get the tones to a level with which we were comfortable.

Moving next to the ATI Launch Pad, we found the package included a TV tuner, an interface for viewing DVD/VCDs, and an audio player for audio CDs and MP3s. The tuner easily found all of our available stations and includes the handy Guide Plus+ TV schedule app, giving us a TV Guide-style interface that made it very simple to pick and choose available programming or schedule later shows for viewing or capture. The audio player interface was similarly well designed and intuitive, automatically configuring all of our PC's sound files to open in the ATI player.

Ease of Use?
We had some problems when we moved to the DVD/VCD player interface. Though ATI's specs state that the software supports both VCD 1.0 and 2.0 formats, we could only play discs burned in the older format. In addition, when we attempted to view a DVD, the software simply displayed an error message. Since the enclosed docs and help files didn't mention any known incompatibilities in these areas, our test team of two reasonably experienced computer techs spent a couple of hours trying to remedy the problems by downloading and installing various Windows 2000 system files such as the current DirectX drivers.

We finally resorted to calling ATI's customer support center and learned that the included documentation is somewhat misleading, since only Windows XP drivers are included on the installation CD. Though ATI's literature claims support for Win 2000 and Win Me, those users are required to download several files, uninstall some of the ATI software, and then reinstall several components in a very specific order. There is no support for Win 98. After the necessary adjustments, we did get the VCD playback feature working, but we still had no luck playing DVDs.

The Good News
The Radeon's video capture feature was as easy to maneuver as clicking a button on the control panel while viewing a video source. The recording controller displayed the recording time available on our PC's hard drive and allowed us to set a default maximum file size so our drive wouldn't inadvertently fill to capacity when recording that late-night rerun of Easy Rider. The card captures in three formats: AVI, MPEG and ATI's proprietary .VCR format. Image quality was indistinguishable from the source on playback, and files were easy to locate in the included editing software. The PVR functions worked well and we forgot we were using a computer when using the remote to change channels and pause live TV.

When capturing from the included tuner or an external video source, the image and sound quality of the Radeon 8500DV was excellent, and we were very pleased with this aspect of the product's performance.

Besides the multitude of multimedia features, this card rocked when it came to 3D gaming. We tried a number of the latest, most demanding games and found that they were all compatible and that advanced effects (shading, textures, lighting, fog) were beautifully rendered.

Final Impressions
We were disappointed with the undocumented installation problems, short manual, the extremely modest help files and pay-per-minute customer support line, which left the ATI short of "Plug-N-Play" expectations.

Unfortunately, ATI seems to have taken the All-In-Wonder too far, bundling every possible feature into the unit, whether it worked well or not. The features that did work, however, were plentiful. PC novices, particularly non-XP users, will be wise to have a tech professional install this package. More advanced users with some patience will be able to sort it out, but may still need to set aside some time to get the All-in-Wonder ready to go. Even with the installation and configuration problems we encountered, we note that there are no capture cards in this price range that compare for quality, have such a fine breakout box or a great remote control.

SMART SPECS