ATI HDTV Wonder FAQ

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Q: I'm getting stuttering, how can I fix it?


If you have a motherboard that uses a VIA chipset that might be the cause of your problems. If I understand it correctly, INTEL invented the PCI bus and other chip makers had to reverse engineer it. From my experience, VIA didn't do a very good job. Use a motherboard that uses an INTEL or NForce chipset.


You might also need to tweak the PCI latency of your video card. Video card manufacturers apparently set the latency to very high values to hog the PCI bus to the detriment of other cards. Use PowerStrip or a similiar utility to lower the PCI Latency to a more reasonable value. Initially, my ATI 9700Pro had its PCI Latency set to 248. I lowered it to 32 and this helped my shuttering dramatically.


If you are using a Radeon video card, go to the advanced display settings and set the Override Refresh Rate Changes (or something like that) to Same as Desktop Refresh Rate. This will prevent the Media Center application from changing your refresh rate when it's in full screen mode. Of course, this assumes that you've already set your desktop resolution and refresh rates to the optimal values for your TV or projector.

The other thread was becoming out of order. I had a riddicolous time trying to find a solution to the NForce IDE DMA problem:


Q: I'm getting a "DMA not enabled" error on my NForce board. Can I fix it?

A: It may not be a problem. Removing the NForce IDE drivers and using the standard drives will get rid of that message. I just hit the stupid okay each time.


I really appreciate your time and effort.


THanks,


Curtis

Thank you! I just finished the entire 99 page thread myself and this is a nice summary.


RE: Q1-2

If you use the Kram drivers, both tuners will work in MCE.



Another new one:


Q: Why am I having such a hard time getting MCE to "see" the ATI card.


A: A likely cause is that you installed the ATI card before the drivers. This always causes an issue for me. If you install the ATI drivers first, the card should be recognized on the first try.


Since most (all?) of the HDTV wonders include the remote wonder, some questions about it would be applicable, IMO.


Q: I can't get my AIW Remote Wonder working, why?


A: Likely causes:

1: Is that you installed the remote sensor before the drivers. Install the drivers/software first, reboot, then install the hardware. I did this backwards and was unable to resolve without rebuilding the machine from scratch.

2: The software that came on the CD for my remote was OLD. Be sure you are using the latest and greatest drivers from ATI.


Q: Is there a plugin to allow my remote wonder to work with MCE?

A: Yes. Click me.

With respect to the Broadcast Flag, this is what it says on the ATI website:


"According to FCC’s Broadcast Flag Order (MB Docket 02-230) adopted November 4, 2003, Digital TV receiver products (like the HDTV WONDER) built on and after July 1, 2005 are required to protect certain digital TV broadcasts. The legislation does not affect HDTV receiver products manufactured before July 1, 2005 (or sold any time after). As such, the HDTV WONDER will continue to function exactly in the same manner it does today past the July 1, 2005 legislation date."


Knowing Microsoft's position intellectual property rights, I'd bet that Windows XP Media Center Edition will be updated to comply with the Broadcast Flag requirements so that if any of the local OTA HDTV broadcasters choose to broadcast with the flag copying and recording of some or all of local HD programs would be restricted.

Almost all of the ATI links have been fixed in honor of the ATI MMC 9.06 release.




Q6-7: Why are your ATI links telling me my session is expired?
A6-7: I'll blame buggy ATI coding. Try going into the general support page first and then clicking on a link. If you know a better way of getting the straight click-through to work, I'd love to hear it.



I am definately experiencing a sense of schadenfreude in the fact that nearly all the links on for current ATI pages to the old www.ati.com/support addresses are broken. Even the most recent release notes for today (March 3rd) have broken links.

Quote:
I'm a little confused.


The files ATI has for download are:

• catalyst
• mmc_uci (MDAC, windows media encoder, DAO, TitanTV)
• hdtv
• atiCD
• mmc_enu

How do they relate to your list:

• DAO
• drivers
• (hardware)
• decoder
• mmc

?


Thanks.

Did you use the link () that takes you to ATI's driver download page?


The relationships are laid out in that table and the filenames as of today are as follows:

DAO / MDAC : 9-08_mmc_uci.exe

HDTV WONDER Drivers : 5-04_hdtv_2030_wdm.exe

DTV Decoder: atiCDwiz.exe

Multimedia Center: 9-08_mmc_enu.exe



On a side note, I'm hoping next week's release will be a big one with some major MMC fixes -- a.k.a. finally saying goodbye to the blackout bug.

Quote:
Oh, THAT table! Yeah , I did.


Where does catalyst come in to play?


I guess I'll wait until next week, too.


Thanks.