ATI AIW Radeon X800XT AGP Video Card Review :: Setup and Television

Watching television on the PC is important to me, as I do not have a regular television in my bedroom due to space considerations. Every time ATI releases an A-I-W card, I am excited to get it in my computer and up and running. ATI provided their Theater 200 CODEC with the card to provide multimedia capabilities. This was first A_I_W card was introduced back in 2002 with the A-I-W RADEON 9700 Pro. ATI has started to ship products with the new Theater 550 Pro chip, but the delayed release of the A-I-W X800XT forced them to release a product with the older chip.

Setup of the card went without incident. Installing an AGP card is as simple as removing the old drivers, removing the current AGP card, and inserting the new AGP card into the available slot. The driver CD contains every program necessary to install the card. Personally, I use the latest drivers from ATI's website, but two items need to be installed from the driver CD, Guide+ Plus and the DVD software.

Television setup is fairly easy and straightforward. After the card is installed, attach the Amplified Antenna or cable and run the setup program. After choosing the type of television connection and the audio, the setup program will run an Autoscan to scan for channels. Note, you may also manually choose channels. The setup program detected 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 22, 28, 30, 34, 40, 46, 52, 56 and 58 as the channels available in my area.

Telefutura

KRCA

Image quality on the A-I-W X800XT while playing television programs is the same as found on previous A-I-W cards. If you have a Theater 550 class card like the TV Wonder Elite, or a Theater 550 Pro from Sapphire you'll notice a difference in quality. I'm used to the quirks of display on television programs with ATI A-I-W cards.

ATI includes an Extended Program Guide called Guide+ Plus with the card. This allows you to download up to a week's worth of programming information in advance. The nice thing about Guide+ Plus compared to TitanTV is you can set it up to download automatically. One touch record is a reality with the MultiMedia Center software, just right click the TV and set record now. It'll bring up a prompt asking for duration and you can set it up to the maximum you have hdd space for.

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