The All-In-Wonder 2006 PCIe Edition: The Latest Multimedia Solution From ATI

The Card



The card looks like a slightly longer version of the standard X1300 Pro, with the signiature A-I-W purple colored board. While the board itself is a bit longer, the HSF is the same shape and size as it is on the X1300, but it's gold colored now and moved to closer to the end of the card. There's also a small gold colored casing for the tuner in the top corner.

Included with the card is the same kind of software and hardware bundle expected with any A-I-W card. The hardware consists of lots of connection equipment for hooking up your cable/tv to the card, but there is something different with the A-I-W 2006. The card does not come with the previously included remote wonder, however ATI will send it to you free of charge (even without having to pay shipping costs) if you send off for it after you've bought your card. This is probably just a way for ATI to save on some costs.

The software bundle is pretty much the same here as it was for the X1800 XL A-I-W. Apart from the standard drivers, you get Adobe Premiere Elements and a lot of familiar utilities for playing/recording video which we'll look at in the next section. Note, Adobe Photoshop Elements is not included as it was with the X1800 version, making the software bundle a bit smaller for the A-I-W 2006.

Why ATI is still using the Theater 200

Many have raised the question as to why ATI would stick with the Theater 200 rather than upgrade to the newer, more feature rich Theater 550. Both the A-I-W 2006 PCIe and the A-I-W X1800 XL make use of ATI's older Theater 200, which doesn't have any hardware support for encoding/decoding and uses older filter technology. The real answer to the question of why ATI isn't jumping to drop the Theater 200 is that they really don't need to.

With the X1000 series, AVIVO enables some advanced video playback features. It is possible for ATI to leverage the GPU and its AVIVO features to enhance the quality of video from TV. This means that ATI really shouldn't look at the advanced filtering features of the Theater 550 as an advantage over the Theater 200 for All-In-Wonder products.

This still leaves the lack of hardware encoding support on the Theater 200 chip. Again, this is not a big issue. How can we say this? Today, ATI's driver includes some highly optimized methods to transcode video. The AVIVO Video Coverter works with ATI X1K graphics cards (although it is not GPU accelerated) to bring users the ability to convert video recorded using the A-I-W 2006 PCIe to virtually any other video format (including WMV9, PSP, and iPod video). The performance of this software is quite good, and while it isn't quite as efficient as a hardware solution, the versatility and potential of this software makes up for any shortcomings.

At the same time, ATI is working on building GPU acceleration into their AVIVO Video Converter. While GPU assistance is off in the distance, ATI's inclusion of a video converter at all gives them a simple vehicle for enabling hardware accelerated encoding/transcoding when their code to do so finally matures. When GPU acceleration hits, encoding and transcoding on X1K A-I-W products will be leaps and bounds better than the features supported on the Theater 550.

Top that off with the fact that ATI has just introduced H.264 decode acceleration and has already included WMV decode acceleration, watching compressed video will have a decreased impact on the CPU as well. All in all, the inclusion of the Theater 200 over the Theater 550 isn't something to worry about. If ATI had all their ducks in a row with hardware assisted encoding right now, there could be absolutely no argument that the Theater 550 would have been a better choice. As it stands, the lack of hardware MPEG-2 encode support on the A-I-W parts is it's only shortcoming, but we hope ATI will fix this as soon as possible by introducing GPU assisted encoding in their driver suite.

Now lets take a look at some of the features of this card.