- Monday, 16 November 2009
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Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, and without sneering teach the rest to sneer - Pope
ATI turns AIW necromancer
ARE YOU A BELIEVER in life after death? The folks at DAAMIT obviously are, as they have resurrected the previously torpid All in Wonder line of graphics cards with a new version based on the Radeon 3600 series.
Dubbed the 'All in Wonder HD', the card features an HDCP-compliant HDMI connection, dual link DVI port, as well as component jacks. There's a TV player / capture device attached too, and full HD video acceleration with support for hardware Blu-ray decoding through the Unified Video Decoder engine.
The card will work with Vista Media Center and will cost a mainstream-friendly $199 (figure £150 this side of the pond).
The only question remains - will people buy it? The reason the AIW series was discontinued was because of a stunning lack of sales. Is there reason to believe that things are any different now?
We have to confess that, short of a halo effect from the 4800 series, we're not convinced they are. µ
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why not make a 4800 AIW card??, why start (again) with some "old" tech card. Probably cause it will not sell at 199US$...oh well
I will buy one in a heartbeat.

As far as the demise of the AIW card: that downfall took place before the emergence of the HTPC market. If ATI can deliver a card that fulfills the needs of the the HTPC market, it will be successfull.
This is Wise Move. AMD is in position to encourage manufacture of Media Quality PCs' at affordable price, something Public EATS Up. One Card Can SELL Entire Unit.

Next: Making Ultimate OEM Machines. people just LOVE easy input & capture of stuff & AIW is more reasonabley priced plus much more complex than older models of yore.

tears streaming: HDMI? o.k. HD: Isn't Much more to say.
For mere more $130 mino video cam really taker,too. Add Memory Card. thats about it, NOW Super BIG Display....

Guess AMD Does want to stay in Business.Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.
I've had AIWs before, and was disappointed when they were dropped. I don't need stunning gaming performance, but having this functionality has always been useful to me. And for an HTPC it's a no-brainer.

Only catch is the lack of CableCard support which isn't AMD's fault, but Cable Labs for requiring they be put only in pre-built computers. That really screwed us over. I'd swap my Time Warner DVR in a heartbeat for a custom-built unit (especially now that they're forcing the upgrade to Mystro Navigator) if I wasn't going to lose HD.
LaiFoX, remember the purpose of a AIW card and you will realize why ATI choose the 36xx series. This isn't a gaming card but a HD playback card. I am surprise ATI even based it off the 36xx series when the lowly 3450 series is more than powerful enough for an 1080p content. A 48xx based AIW would be overly expensive, too hot for a SFF/silent HTPC, and never used more than 1/6th of its power for playback


AIW relaunch is probably due to the upswing in the HTPC market. Being a system builder, I have noticed more HTPCs recently.
I used aiw 128 pro (agp)
aiw 8500dv
aiw 9800 pro
aiw x1900

All of them I was super happy about and were great for gaming, not just middle of the road.

then AMD snubbed its large AIW fanbase by refusing to make a driver after ATI was bought.

What is with this bringing out the scum series for aiw? 3870 and 4870 screams for aiw functionallity

media center for windows users are tiny percentage. WHo cares about them and their DRM issues? I do not. QAM, NTSC and whatever other standard could be built right in so easily as is the 650 tv wonder. 

Nvidia's offerings always were pathetic and continue to be so in multimedia vs gaming which they are almost solely focused on.
Imagine the sales if they have those. I will surely order some if they could support 3rd party plug-ins.
VisionTek will no doubt build one of these cards with some of the features turned off, that will help ATI