ATI software change=quieter computer.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:09 pm

I have been having nasty software problems with three different ATI AIW cards. Well I got my AIW 9200 working excellent....fingers crossed. The problem was the MMC, and the TV tuner. I was having audio and video problems, some bad enough to crash XP.

Plus.....all the recent versions of the MMC, have a "TV on demand" function that keeps the HD working, and makes my P4-3.4 run at about 20% usage when the TV is on. This of course makes the CPU heat up, and causes the fan to speed up.....not good.

Well after trying out every conceivable combination of video drivers, and the MMC, I found the right combination.

Video driver.....7.1, the current driver.
dao-mdac version 9-1-0-0
MMC version 9.03.

These last two files were released about February 2005 (5.2 version}. The "TV on Demand" can be disabled with this older MMC, and my CPU usage when the TV is running dropped to about 3%. This lower CPU usage makes the computer quieter....dropped 100rpms off the cpu fan speed.

My advice to an AIW owner......try out this older software. It works perfectly for me.....XP Sp2 completely updated, without the new media player 10.

One other thing.....the TV video and the TV audio are now perfectly in sync, which was not the case with the other software.

Arvo · Post by **Arvo** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 10:15 am

Another possibility is little reg hack:

Open regedit, locate key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ATI Technologies\MultiMedia\Features\DTV\Channel Manager

and change value LiveMode (in right pane) to 1.

After that even later MMC versions start witouht ToD.

Unfortunately MMC tends to reset this registry value sometimes, thereby I additionally disabled changing any values in this key, using XP internal security features (right-click on key (left pane), security tab and so on).

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:58 am

Well I find no real difference in the functionality of this older MMC verses the newer versions. My problems with the newer MMC involved audio problems mostly......pauses, sync problems, popping noises, etc.

Turning off the TOD feature is just one benefit......it stays off without any registry tweaks. Yet I can use it if I wanted, which is never. It's a stupid feature that does make your CPU work harder.

Arvo · Post by **Arvo** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:55 am

9.03 probably is the same as newer ones. It was year or two ago, when I experimented with various MMC versions - some older (probably 8.x) versions had nasty bugs, like inablility to record mpeg4 stream in avi container or similar.

Currently this doesn't matter anymore - I'm using my AIW only for TV capturing with VirtualDub, thereby I even could uninstall MMC.

Well, I need more info anyway

What version of WDM driver did you install? I haven't tested installing different versions of ATI video and WDM drivers - but if this works well, then maybe I have to rethink my AIW driver selection

--edit--
Of course I forgot that you're using AIW NTSC version... Ati Theatre 200 chip (and 550 too, btw) has problems with PAL+Nicam stereo, different driver versions handle these problems differently. For me the old WDM versions (without ToD) often just killed stereo; no problems with my current WDM (6.6). MMC 9.14 kills stereo something though, VDub doesn't.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:28 am

Thanks for the info......I wasted so much time with these three AIW cards (a 2006, a 9200, an X800XP) just trying to get a stable picture, with good audio, that didn't crash frequently, I was about to give up. I occasionally just watch TV on a wide-screen monitor, occasionally record a TV program, but mostly just record various programs off a monster pile of old home-made video-tapes.

So far everything is working without problems using the 9200 AIW.......I'll deal with the other two cards when I need to use them. I'm tired of the hassle with these cards and the ATI software.