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Installation of
the AIW R8500DV was fairly straight forward. There are
a several cable hook-ups, for the I/O Pod, Audio In and Out
and the USB RF Remote Receiver but nothing the quick start
pictorial didn't spell out very clearly, for the average end
user with some level of hardware knowledge.
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Installation
and Drivers |
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All that and a bag
of chips |
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The are several
drivers that the install CD will will automatically load
into your system. Remember, there are several levels
of AV hardware, beyond just the graphics drivers, that need
to be supported. Here's a quick snapshot of all the
hardware level drivers that are installed with the AIW
R8500DV. This was taken in the WinXP Control Panel.
The AIW R8500DV is like a system in itself.
What is not
shown in this shot is the Fire-Wire port. WinXP
displays this as another system controller in its own
sub-section. We weren't able to test out the port and
functionality of this feature unfortunately, since we
haven't picked up a DV Camcorder as of yet.
With respect to
the Radeon 8500DV drivers themselves, the card uses the
standard ATi Radeon 8500 Graphics drivers, now with
SmoothVision Anti-Ailiasing enabled (click
here for screenshots of SmoothVision Drivers) as well as
TruForm (TruForm examples here).
ATi's All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV - Remote Control Features:
Please click
images below for full viewing.
Now, we get to
the real beauty of the AIW R8500DV package, ATi's remote
control. Not only is this THE most functional remote
control we have ever used with any PC TV Tuner solution but
the little RF Remote Receiver (shown top right) actually
works without the need for line of site point to point
communication. You can actually be in another room and
have full control of desktop, TV and DVD functionality.
You can even browse the web with the mouse pointer buttons
on the remote (top left).
We were totally
impressed with the remote control features of the AIW
R8500DV. Perhaps we are couch potatoes at heart but we
are typically not this easily amused. Amused would be
an understatement here. We were just plain "wowed".
Now that we have
things installed here, let's take a look at what the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV can do on the Audio/Video side
of things.
Software, A/V Performance & Features
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