ATI AIW 9600 works well in an HTPC application.

The ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 is a middle-of-the-road selection for graphics and multimedia on the PC. The card offers up the ATI Radeon 9600 graphics chipset for gameplay and normal computer functions and a Philips TV Tuner for multimedia input. The proprietary dongle includes many input and output options, making this one great choice for HTPC builders. Some of the highlights on the hardware side include:

128mb DDR memory onboard
AGP 8X and 4X compliant
TV Input through Coax cable
Input brick with audio, composite video and S-Video inputs for camcorders, VCR, external DVD player etc.
Dongle with Composite, S-Video, and dual VGA outputs as well as S/PDIF output
Line In to pass Audio information to Sound Card
ATI Remote Wonder with IR remote receiver (Plugs into available USB port)
DirectX 9 support

With any multimedia card there will be a need for a good software package to drive it. In the case of the ATI All-In-Wonder series, ATI has developed some of the software in-house and bought out some applications to include with the card. The Software package includes:

ATI MultiMedia Center Software
Pinnacle Studio 8 (ATI Version): Movie production software
muvee AutoProducer: Create music videos from your media content
Real One Player (Optimized for the ATI software)
DivX Player (Optimized for the ATI software)
Gemstar Guide Plus: Electronic Programming Guide

HTPC Panacea?

Over six months ago I wanted to build an HTPC. After searching the web, sifting through forums and reading many reviews and guides, I realized that there was still much to learn. However, I had to start somewhere, so why not go with a name I trusted? I looked at the 9800 PRO All-In-Wonder but quickly realized that my gaming on this computer would be minimal as I had a separate computer for those applications. This Home Theater Personal Computer would be used for viewing, recording and editing video content for the most part, and as such the 9600 AIW would work great. I would have liked to have stepped up to the 9600XT AIW, but at that time they had just been released and still carried a hefty premium over the 9600. I found the card on sale at Newegg and bought it.

Hardware installation and setup

I performed a clean install of the AIW 9600 into my new HTPC. If you are replacing an older graphics board with the AIW 9600, you will first need to uninstall the drivers for the old card and pull it from the AGP slot. The computer into which this board was installed consists of the following:

Antec Overture case
MSI PT-880 NEO-LISR Motherboard
2.4a Prescott family Intel Pentium 4 chip
512MB (2X256MB) of PC3200 Corsair Value Ram
160GB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB cache
200GB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB cache
Cisco Aironet 350 Wireless 802.11b PCI card
ATI 9600 AIW video card with ATI Multimedia Center Software
Microsoft Windows XP Home edition
ATI MultiMedia Center Software
SnapStream Beyond TV 3
PowerDVD 5.0

In my case I wanted to connect my Television (27” Samsung tube) as the output for the video and my Sony SurroundSound stereo system as the output for the audio. For inputs I had a DirectTV tuner, VHS/DVD combo and basic cable for the local channels. Since that time we added broadcast channels through DirecTV and dropped the basic cable, and then more recently we disconnected our DirecTV and went with Premium Digital Cable due to pricing.

In any case, the installation of this card was not nearly as straightforward as other installs I have performed, mainly due to the fact that I wanted to connect it to a TV. Before you can do such a thing, you need to connect it to a computer monitor and load the drivers for the card, as the default computer settings do not recognize S-Video out, etc. In my case I connected this to my existing Home PC via a KVM switch from IO Gear.

Once I had the card installed in the case and was able to view through the KVM, I installed the drivers from the Motherboard driver CD. This just gives rudimentary control of the monitor, however. I then installed the CATALYST Software and finally the Remote Wonder software and receiver. This process is lengthy by the time you are complete.

With the drivers loaded and software installed, I was able to move the computer to the entertainment center for connection through the TV, sans monitor. I had to use a diplexer to combine my cable and satellite signal outside of the house into one cable which then was split at the entertainment center for inputting to the DirecTV box. From here I used coax cable to come out of the DirecTV box to the Philips TV tuner on the AIW card. The input brick was used to bring a signal from my DVD/VHS combo. The 1/8” audio plug was connected to the line-in jack on the sound card, and from there I used the included cable from the line out of the sound card to the inputs on the SurroundSound stereo system. For output, I used an S-Video cable included with the card to route the signal from the AIW 9600 to the television and I was ready to go!

Software installation/updates

I am currently running an older version of Catalyst drivers (version 6.14.10.6467) and Multimedia Center 9.02. ATI has since released a newer version of both with the release of newer cards, but I am probably not going to upgrade due to upgrade issues in the past.

You see, when I installed the card the version of software that came on the disk was an iteration older than what I am running now, so when version 9.02 was released I figured I should upgrade. I was having no known problems with the older version, but I usually feel it is a good idea to stay up to date, just in case. To update the drivers and software you just go to the ATI website and download the newest version. At this point you will be required to remove the old ATI catalyst/MMC, and this is the part that causes me problems. I then lose the ability to view my screen on the TV as the driver is gone! I had to move the computer over to the KVM switch and load the drivers, MMC, etc. This is a tedious process that requires things to be done in a certain order, and I have not found the big problem that would make me think I should have needed to do this.

The other problem with installing new drivers is that they are constantly troubleshooting the drivers due to computer hardware incompatibilities. ATI cannot possibly test the drivers with every possible setup of hardware and software, so they rely on you, the end user, to tell them of incompatibilities. Take a look at the list of known issues with certain drivers; you will see what I mean. This may force you to uninstall the new drivers and reinstall the previous iteration.

Performance/Use

Performance and use of this card should be broken up into two sections, Multimedia and everything else. For our HTPC, we generally use the multimedia functions 95% of the time. The remaining 5% is for gaming and typical computer usage such as writing epinions, surfing the net and whatnot. While the strength of the AIW 9600 is the multimedia, it is important to remember that this is a great graphics engine as well.

Multimedia Use

MultiMedia Center

The AIW 9600 works very well for media playback and recording. The heart of this functionality is the ATI MultiMedia Center which controls DVD and file playback and TV tuning. The interface is fairly clean and easy to operate at the touch of a button from the Remote Wonder supplied by ATI which is discussed later. The DVD playback option of MMC allows users to fast-forward rewind and pause the video just as a typical DVD would. If playback of a file occurs (such as a DVD ripped to MPEG or DivX) the fast-forward and rewind buttons no longer work, but the user can forward or reverse in thirty second increments to the point in the video which interests them using arrow buttons.

For television viewing the user can choose to use TV-on-demand, an application that allows the user to pause live television. We have used this option quite a bit during football games and the like to allow us to replay plays of interest. I suppose you could use it for eliminating commercials by fast forwarding through the time-shifted portions, but I have not tried to do so. In the interface you can set the cache size to any size allowable via the partition free space. In our case we have this set to 3GB which gives us quite a bit of flexibility regarding how much time we can skip back for viewing.

There is the option via Gemstar Guide+ to schedule recordings of television, but for us this did not work very well. The Philips TV tuner on the card is a 125 channel analog tuner, meaning that if you run digital satellite or cable you are out of luck. If this is your situation you have three options: run the tuner in the PC on channel three and tune your Set Top Box to the channel you wish to record and leave it there, buy a third party utility or buy an IR Blaster.

I am not going to review the software package Snapstream BeyondTV 3 at length here, but in regards to the card this is the third party application I use. If you have a DirecTV tuner or Cable Box tuner that is supplied with a serial port (and the serial port is not disabled) you can connect the box to your PC via an RS232 cable and set the PC remote to change the channels via the serial connection. Like I said, I am not going to review this extensively, but it is possible and this is how I do it. The IR blaster basically sets up an IR controller in your PC that changes the channel via IR just as a remote would. I did not have to go this route, and you should know it is more expensive. I was just happy to be able to switch the channels via the Electronic Program Guide within SnapStream BeyondTV 3.

The editing program that is included is Pinnacle Studio 8. This application will theoretically allow you to edit any video source and render the results to a file. Personally I would recommend dumping this program and going with something else, as it buggy. I tried to edit the recorded TV shows to cut the commercials using this program and the application either locked up during rendering or had severe problems with audio and video sync. My editing tool of choice is PowerDirector 3 by Cyberlink, but I am sure that others will work as well.


An option that I do not use much in my HTPC is ThruView. This may come in very handy for folks using this more as a PC, however. What ThruView does is allow the user to set the opacity of the TV window, thus allowing you to view the TV episode or DVD signal while still being able to work on the desktop applications. The opacity can be set to varying degrees to accommodate the user. The applications can be moved front to back, making the applications opaque over the TV and shifting focus to the TV screen. As we use this primarily for a TV control box and not a computer, this has little value and is not used very often.

Remote Wonder

The AIW 9600 comes with an ATI Remote Wonder which can control your HTPC and many of the applications on it. The Remote Wonder is an RF remote which gives you approximately thirty feet of range. At the touch of a button the user can start the TV viewing application, DVD playback or go to the Library. The Library is a collection of the media files present on the PC; audio, video and stills. The remote has six programmable buttons that the user can designate for opening applications and the like. We also use the Remote Wonder as a pointing device, taking the place of the ubiquitous mouse. There is a 1” diameter directional pad and two buttons to simulate right and left mouse buttons, and it works. It does not work well, however. In order for the pointer to stop moving when I lift my finger, I had to turn the sensitivity up and slow the mousing speed down. This works; unfortunately it makes it awfully slow as a mousing device. When the batteries get low, you will know. The accuracy and range of the remote will drastically decrease when this happens!

Overall the remote is fairly intuitive and easy to use. It is not, however, trainable. I would like to be able to train the remote to send out signals to turn off the TV, for instance. I can do that with my Palm and an application called NoviRemote, and it would be nice to have that functionality here.

The 9600XT AIW cards are shipped with the Remote Wonder II. One of the items which the Remote Wonder II has that he Remote Wonder does not is IR capability. It seems that ATI is looking forward and thinking of adding IR Blaster capability to the package, but as of right now it is not there.


3D graphics functionality

Lets not forget that this is not only a multimedia control device but also a pretty darned good graphics card! I have used this for gaming and the DirectX 9 compatibility and AGP 8X support makes this capable of handling most games out there. In my case I have used this card to play Far Cry and The Sims 2 at 1280 X 1024 resolution with 4X Antialiasing and it works fine. I assume that I am seeing at least 30 FPS, as I do not notice any visible artifacting or choppiness. I seriously doubt that this card would have a chance of running Doom3 at full settings, but with reduced resolution and no frills it would work. Unreal Tournament 2004 plays well so long as you are using an actual mouse to control, as the remote mousing control is so slow your game will be over quickly! I am not going to use this as a gaming computer all of the time, as I have a computer that is better set to do that. However, when the wife is on the other computer and no one is watching the TV, I will switch it on. Besides, it is better to play on a 27” screen than a 17”!

Support

ATI does not have the award-winning support you will find with some third party graphics card manufacturers, yet it is not terrible either. The ATI team is constantly revamping the drivers and multimedia center, which is something. The problem is that this is almost required, as there are often bugs to be fixed with every release. As stated earlier, this is to be expected with such a robust card. Recent versions of MMC include what is called EasyShare which in effect turns your machine into a video server. Sounds like a great app worthy of upgrading to, right? I have not done so, however, as you have to be running an ATI card for this function to work. My GeForce 6800 will not work with this, and that kind of killed that innovation for me. If you have questions, visit the site as it contains a significant amount of information. However, I would like to see email support or a user forum, which is not present.

Overall

Overall I am very pleased with my purchase and the card does what I wanted it to do. Support for the serial connection for digital satellite or cable would improve this, or at the least offer an IR Blaster-type of application. The TV and DVD viewing is wonderful in quality and function and the ThruView may be a great tool for you. If you are in the market today and can get the 9600XT for roughly the same money, I would do so. The Remote Wonder II may support IR Blaster function at some point, making it a better buy. However, if the money is a problem, this card performs well and is worth the money.

Sites of interest to HTPC builders

http://www.htpcnews.com

http://www.byopvr.com