High Definition

In ATI solutions previously, this required a separate tuner but the Theater 650 allows for this through the use of an amplified antenna. This isn't included with the package, but can easily be picked up online or in-store. The beauty of this is Over-The-Air is that it is completely free (the signal that is). Coverage varies depending where you are, so you'll need to do some research for your area. Americans will have much better coverage than Canadians, but this is improving for those living North of the border.

Standard Television	High Definition

Despite compressing the images above, it's pretty obvious that high definition provides a much cleaner and sharper image. Keep in mind that HDTV eats up a lot of hard drive space. Full resolution 1080i uses about 120-125 MB/sec, but it can use more depending on the content. Those 750GB drives don't look so silly now, eh?

The Theater 312 demodulator chip is what makes all of this possible for the Theater 650. The Theater 312 is part of the family of chipsets designed for high definition reception. Here's a bit from their press release that kind of explains how these chipsets came to be:

"ATI developed the new Theater chips as a response to current and future HDTV requirements. More specifically, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently reaffirmed the digital tuner mandate requiring 50 per cent of all 25-inch to 35-inch TVs include digital tuners by July 1, 2005 and accelerated the 100 per cent mandate for this same segment from July 1, 2006 to March 1, 2006. The FCC has also announced it is considering shifting the mandate for digital tuners in 13-inch and greater sets to December 31, 2006. Simultaneously, United States legislators are also now proposing a hard shut-off date for off-air National Television System Committee standard transmissions as early as 2008. This mandate and legislation, along with increasing consumer demand, are driving TV manufacturers to convert mid- and low-end TV products to digital formats at an unprecedented rate."

You can learn more about this technology from their Theater 314, 312 and 311 product page.

Software

We did not have much time with the product to give the software a thorough examination, but new with the Theater 650 is the Catalyst Media Center. The software suite provides a large number of useful applications that cover the gamut from TV to DVD to Radio. The interface is TV friendly meaning it can be used in place of Windows Media Center if you do not own such a license. While basic features such as playback are offered, there are some powerful advanced features such as video conversion and DVD recording built in.

The card does work perfectly in Windows Media Center though, which is where we primarily use the product. Channel switching isn't really any faster than AIW products, but it is in line with what we expected. It took some time to actually get the card to be recognized in MCE, and we often ran into decoder errors during setup. We thought the product was defective, but our replacement exhibited the same issues. When tested with the Catalyst Media Center, the product worked fine. In the end, we were missing a decoder, which we downloaded. We are still unsure why it was missing on the driver CD, but current retail versions shouldn't have this issue.

Image Quality

S-Video Image Quality

Image quality is excellent with the Theater 650, but not without some caveats. The quality will be dependent on the source video cable used to input video into the TV tuner. COAX will provide the poorest video quality, though it is still very watchable for most standard television or video viewing which we'll cover in a moment. Moving to composite video where the video stream has it's own video cable and separate left and right video channels will provide a cleaner image plus better audio. S-Video requires its own audio cables, but the extra wiring present for each colour will provide the best quality outside of HD compatible cabling.

S-Video bypasses the demodulator and doesn't demonstrate the Theater 650's ability to do its magic. We setup our satellite PVR to playback a PPV we've kept for our video testing.

550 Pro COAX	650 COAX

Compared to the Theater 550, we saw no difference between the two. This doesn't come as too much of a surprise as both products are quite similar. We don't have an antenna handy so we were unable to test the Theater 650's abilities in this area, but we hope to revisit this in the future.

Final Words

The ATI Theater 650 is easily the most advanced dedicated TV tuner we've had the chance to look at. Image quality is excellent and the product is extremely easy to install. Setup under Windows XP is about a couple minutes, and after a reboot you're almost ready to go. It takes some configuration depending on your video feed, but we did not have any installation quirks under XP or MCE. Those of you eyeing Vista on the horizon will be happy to know the card is fully supported by the upcoming OS.

Performance wise, the Theater 650 was on par with the 550 Pro in terms of CPU usage. Watching TV on our Athlon 64 3500+ ate about 22% CPU. Recording while watching adds a little more, but it never spiked past 35%. Image quality was great via the analog connections but unfortunately in our part of the country here, OTA digital HDTV is not readily available. Back to the connections, for the majority of users, the S-Video and Composite should be enough. We had hoped that we'd see some high definition inputs with the latest tuners, but it looks like we'll have to hold that thought for next time.

There aren't any real drawbacks to the Theater 650 (unless you don't need a TV tuner, in which case, congrats for reading this far) but for real TV junkies, you will be unable to watch and record to shows at the same time with a single Theater 650. You will need two card for this functionality, which can be a problem if you're limited for space. We would have also have liked to have seen digital inputs, but it looks like we'll have to keep waiting for that.

In our opinion, the Theater 650 is a worthy upgrade from the Theater 550 Pro. It does everything the 550 Pro can do, except with some upgrades and new features. There is a price premium of around $50, but it does offer OTA digital TV which alone can add about $70 and use up an extra PCI slot if you go with the two card route. Of course, if FTA is not an option, the Theater 550 Pro would be a more frugal choice though you will miss some of the enhancements in the newer product.