Xtasy everything: VisionTek XTasy Everything 5564 Personal Cinema

5 апреля, 2023

VisionTek XTasy Everything 5564 Personal Cinema



The VisionTek XTasy Everything 5564 Personal Cinema
A
Cheap Date With Multi-Media

By —
Dave Altavilla
November 19, 2001

Convergence, that’s what the multi-media scene is all
about.  In addition to conjuring up printed
documents, spreadsheets, charts and graphs, the 
modern personal computer, for the average household, has
become more of an entertainment medium than anything else. 
3D Gaming, music and video are all data types that today’s
computers must process and handle in real-time.

As a result, virtually all of the available graphics
chipset technologies on the market, have the ability to
process and reproduce digital video in hardware,  as
well as 3D graphical scenes.   With the ability of
encoding and decoding in various DV formats, the average
end user has the power and potential to produce and view
near professional quality video and audio, with ease and
simplicity.   Historically, these technologies
came in the form of discrete video processing cards for
the encode and decode of TV and DVD signals.  These
days, folks like Visiontek wrap them all up in one neat
little bundle, like the XTasy Everything 5564 Personal
Cinema kit.


Specifications and Features of the VisionTek
Xtasy Everything
All the toys, even
the clicker…



 


Intelligent TV
The power to
pause digitally, instant replay, commercial bypass,
record and timeshift live TV

Easily schedule and organize the recording of your
favorite TV shows

Preset Good, Better, Best
and Customized Quality
recording settings
? Thumbnail channel surfing
? Still frame capture
? Closed captioning
? Electronic Programming Guide

Personal Digital Video Recorder
Digital VCR with real-time MPEG2 compression for
your PC

Record TV shows or home videos
on your PC

Superior Quality DVD Playback
Supports DVD, MPEG1&2, SVCD,
VCD, and CD

? Bookmark your favorite scenes
? Capture snapshots
? Zoom-in clone, and pan
? Microsoft® DXVA compatible

High-Quality Video Editing
& Publishing
Easy capture & output

Create your own home video from your TV, VCR,
camcorder, or Web Cam

Scene Detection lets you find and display separate
scenes for
quick editing

Create and post streaming video and share it on the
Web

Spice up your movies with title effects, transitions,
animations, audio tracks, and more

Fast rendering & post-production

High-resolution Video Conferencing
MPEG1 and MPEG2 quality with Microsoft
Multi-function NetMeeting, and other supported
software

Industry?s First Multi-function
Wireless Remote
Single remote controls CD/DVD playback, TV, DVR,
and Electronic Programming Guide

Video Output to Monitor,
TV, or VCR PERFORMANCE

Industry?s Best 2D/3D
Graphics Technology
GeForce2 MX400 64MB AGP

TwinView technology

Dual VGA and S-Video/TV in +out connectors

Real-time AVI, QuickTime, MPEG1, MPEG2 capture (VCR to
DVD resolution)

Real-time MPEG2 Timeshifting Playback

Xtasy Everything 5564 comes with a 3 year warranty
 

     

The
heart of this bundle is the nVidia based GeForce2MX 400
graphics card.   The card has 64MB of standard Synch
DRAM.  It also has two VGA connectors on its header,
which gives it Twin View / Dual Head capability for
multi-monitor support.

Along with the
GF2MX 400 you get a break out box which allows
for input of TV Cable or Antenna signals, as well as
S-Video and composite sources.   It is based on

nVidia’s Personal Cinema

technology and has a plethora of options. It has a
TV-Tuner section internally that will decode either cable
TV or broadcast signals.  However, that is not all it
is capable of.  Effectively this unit could take
input from just about any other video source including DVD
Players, VCRs, and Camcorders.  Visiontek also
bundles in all the cables you would need, to
interface these sources to the
breakout box.

Click On
Images To Enlarge

Interestingly
enough, the Personal Cinema break out box also comes with
a built in infrared remote eye.  This allows for
«line of site» remote control of the unit and all its
functions.   The user can perform anything from basic
channel switching, to one touch record of any video
source, including TV broadcasts and DVDs.

This setup is
the techno-couch-potato’s dream come true.  Not only
can you play, record and edit with this unit but you need
not even get up to click a mouse. Frankly, the average
users may only touch upon a few of the basic functions
that this kit has to offer.  However, ease of use and
a short learning curve, may have folks using their PC for
things that they had not thought of previously.  For
example, plugging in a Camcorder via an S-Video cable to
the break out box, would allow you to convert analog taped
videos to MPEG2 or AVI video format on your computer. 
Imagine sending the Grand Parents clips of little Jimmy
that would otherwise have to wait for a holiday pilgrimage
in order to be seen.  We think you get the idea. 
Now if we could only get some of the HH Tech’s to put down
the remote and get back to work.

Let’s set
things up and roll it.


Setup, Software and Drivers


 

Visiontek’s Xtasy Everything (NVIDIA Personal Cinema)

by Anand Lal Shimpion April 22, 2002 10:40 PM EST

  • Posted in
  • GPUs

2 Comments
|

2 Comments

IndexThe ContendersMatrox’s Marvel G450 eTVMarvel G450 Time ShiftingMatrox — Shortcomings & Video CaptureVisiontek’s Xtasy Everything (NVIDIA Personal Cinema)The Personal Cinema RemoteRecording with the Personal CinemaTime Shifting with the Personal CinemaMSI’s G3Ti500 Pro-VTMSI & WinProducerATI’s All-in-Wonder RadeonATI’s All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DVATI’s Remote WonderATI’s Software takes the CakeEncoding with ATIATI’s GemShortcomings with Guide+ATI’s All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 128MBGaming PerformanceFinal Words

Visiontek’s Xtasy Everything (NVIDIA Personal Cinema)

We first discovered NVIDIA’s intentions to enter this market when we received
an early beta of what ended up becoming their Personal Cinema product. What
stood out the most about this product wasn’t its software and it wasn’t its
hardware implementation, instead it was the inclusion of an infrared remote
control that impressed us. Such a simple thing to offer went overlooked for
many generations of ATI All-in-Wonder and Matrox Marvel cards and with NVIDIA’s
first try, they brought just what the doctor ordered.


The WDM capture driver must be installed with the Detonator drivers to enable
capture support.

NVIDIA’s Personal Cinema technology is designed in such a way that it complements
their product line quite well. With new GPUs and cards being released every
6 months, sometimes more than 3 cards released at once, it wouldn’t make much
sense to create twice as many cards to offer Personal Cinema versions of all
of them. Instead, NVIDIA chose to enclose the vast majority of the hardware
needed for the Personal Cinema in an external box.

All that is needed on the graphics card itself is a Philips video encoder chip
and a special 9-pin output connector in place of the usual S-Video connector.
This means that in theory, board manufacturers could make Personal Cinema versions
of any NVIDIA card although that hasn’t been the case in reality. The vast majority
of Personal Cinema products are still GeForce2 MX based although we have seen
some GeForce3 models. There has yet to be a single GeForce4 Personal Cinema
at the time of publication although most GeForce4s already feature the proper
encoder chip and output.


Click to Enlarge — The Philips encoder chip is to the left of the heatsink
and above the flash ROM.

Visiontek one of the first out with their GeForce2 MX 400 based Xtasy Everything
based on NVIDIA’s Personal Cinema design. The board is a simple 64MB GeForce2
MX 400 with two VGA outputs and the aforementioned 9-pin output in between them.
The Philips encoder chip powers the inputs and outputs on the green Personal
Cinema breakout box. The breakout box is pretty simple, containing only the
analog Philips TV tuner and all of the analog circuitry to drive the composite,
s-video and 1/8″ audio inputs and outputs. Regardless of whether the Personal
Cinema is used with a GeForce2 MX or a GeForce3, the performance and behavior
of its video features is the same because they all use the same video encoder
chip and the same breakout box.

Matrox — Shortcomings & Video Capture
The Personal Cinema Remote
IndexThe ContendersMatrox’s Marvel G450 eTVMarvel G450 Time ShiftingMatrox — Shortcomings & Video CaptureVisiontek’s Xtasy Everything (NVIDIA Personal Cinema)The Personal Cinema RemoteRecording with the Personal CinemaTime Shifting with the Personal CinemaMSI’s G3Ti500 Pro-VTMSI & WinProducerATI’s All-in-Wonder RadeonATI’s All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DVATI’s Remote WonderATI’s Software takes the CakeEncoding with ATIATI’s GemShortcomings with Guide+ATI’s All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 128MBGaming PerformanceFinal Words

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Try it! Everything will work out! — a series of books published by AST

Subscribe to news series:

3

books

2

authors

About

series

View allx