Rating: 
Summary: Great card but difficult to setup
Review: As the other reviews noted, there are problems with installing this card, even though I got it working successfully in the end. Although it isn't my top pick for a graphics card, I have enjoyed being able to hook it up to my VCR and print my digital videos to VHS (yes, this is possible, although it is a bit tricky to setup.)I withhold one star on this card for having lack of customer support and being hard to setup. If the user manual would have been more comprehensive, and if the ATI website would have had more help on the subject of installing this card, the whole nasty ordeal of card setup (that almost all night) might have been spared.
Rating: 
Summary: Big let down from ATI - All in Wonder Radeon 8500DV
Review: Been in the computer industry for many years. Trusted ATI in the past, but this card is the worst thing I have ever had to try and install. I spent over 12 hours trying to install this card and make it work. Currently I have been able to get my system back to where it was prior to attempting this installation. If I could only get it to keep from locking up I would be there. To the writers of the latest code for this card, you shoud be hung from the highest tree. I had had high hopes for the functionality of this card, but with this recent adventure, I will never buy anything from ATI again. In summary, I think a perfect acronym for this card is POS, use your imagination!
Rating: 
Summary: Great card, better than expedcted...
Review: Considering the price of this card, its hard to be disappointed. I installed it into my freshly built system using a full version of Windows XP. As I write this, I am watching an old episode of Star Trek TNG on a small screen on top of AOL. The capture feature works great and the the additional goodies...from cables to a nice remote controller are exceptional. I never use the enclosed driver disk with new hardware, and the 8500DV was no exception. There is not any reason not to download the newest drivers for the initial install... I have found it reduces many hassles. Speaking of hassles, I have had none with this card. Windows XP is such an improvement for handling complex components like the 8500DV, I would recommend it over hassling over a maxed out Win 98 system. This card costs about the same as a prime 3D gaming card. It provides dramatic capabilities. ATI has really done a great job with this card. For the price....it cannot be beat.
Rating:
Summary: CATALYST for best perfomance
Review: Excellent card, full of features. This card has the best quality DVD playback I've ever seen. 3D Performance is on par with Nvidia's current offerings, but more than adequate for games currently on the market (especially with the newest CATALYST drivers from ATi). Also excellent for video capture. The analog video capture rivals much more expensive professional products. I haven't encountered any issues, instability or incompatibility that ATi hasn't had a fix for. No complaints.
Rating: 
Summary: Verify Your Motherboard Supports the Firewire Port
Review: Great board except the firewire feature does not work on many motherboards. ATI's response to that is to tell you to get new BIOS from your motherboard manufacturer. Only way to get it to work in non-compatible motherboards is to turn off the firewire port. This basically shuts off the "DV" part of the product. Confirm it works with your motherboard and BIOS before buying.
Rating:
Summary: Ok graphics card for everything you get with it
Review: Here's the deal on this graphics card. This is a good card for everything you get with it--lots of cool software (including Digital Video editing software and HalfLife, a popular game). You also get TV out and a TV tuner built in, plus connectors for just about every digital and analog format ever invented. It even comes with a USB RF remote control!...you can c ontrol your computer from anywhere in your house. Now, the bad stuff... the software and drivers are clumsy. They work great in Windows XP, but I experienced some problems installing and using them in Windows 2000. You're really getting three different cards in one... a graphics card, a TV tuner card, and a digital video editing card. For that aspect, it's good, but with only 64MB of onboard DDR RAM (not upgradeable), you might find that your system becomes a little sluggish when using the TV feature and software, editing video and playing a game at the same time. It's like they've tried to put too much into one product. This is good, if you can figure everything out, but bad if you don't really need all the extras. It really shoud come with 128 MB of RAM to support all of the extra stuff on it. Overall: a good graphics card, but for less money you can get more RAM and less stuff you won't use.
Rating:
Summary: Be aware of ATI products
Review: I agree with others opinion that if you get lucky and the card installs properly this product is great. I have quite extensive experience with PCs (I have put together over 100 of them) and it took me 6 hours to make this card work. I would give it more stars but..... First of all, when I bought it, it said on a box that FREE VideoStudio 6.0 by Ulead is included. Well it wasn't, instead there was VideoStuio 5.0 which I wasn't able make it work. Secondly, when I tried to contact ATI by email I was getting stupid autoreply totally unrelated to my question why ATI company is cheating their customers. I would call them but they charge you over [X] a minute for support. So the bottom line don't count on any support from ATI.
Rating:
Summary: close, but no cigar
Review: I bought this card because I was interested in TV and video capture. I have a multi-boot P4 sysetem (win98, win2k, solaris, linux) so I needed a board that would support all 4 systems. ATI's website indicates that their winME driver will work w/win98se. Unfortunately, this is not the case (at least on my system). Win2k operation was OK, once I downloaded new drivers (the ones w/the board didn't play DVDs correctly). Sadly, I'm returning this one and looking elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Boys Toy
Review: I got this card about a month ago. I didn't have any problems with installation. Works great! I get about the same 3D -gaming framerates as my old Gainward Geforce 2 Ti 500 XP card, but the video quality is infinitely better. Plus you get a really cool remote control! ;-) If you are going to be working with video capture at all on your PC don't even bother getting an Nvidia card with video capture, ATI has hardware video decompression and processing. It's very worth it!
Rating:
Summary: Good if installs correctly
Review: I have installed drives, video cards, and other things in computers with out major problems. This video card was the hardest and took the longest to install. I recommend that people research possible installation problems before putting it in their computers. I installed this video card and tried to boot up. All I got was the ATI bios, my computer wouldn't boot up. After thinking that I didn't uninstall the old drivers correctly I reinstalled my old video card so I could get my computer to boot up and then unstalled the drivers again. I tried installing the new card again, same result. Reason? My mother board was incompatible with the firewire ports on the card and I had to disable them by turning a little switch on the card to the off position. I made sure it was the right one by going to ATI support web site. It took me half an hour just to find how to do this. If one of the reasons your getting this card is the firewire ports, make sure your motherboard is supported. After that I was quite happy with it. Scored a 6600 on Mad onion benchmark mark 2001. Not Geforce 4 numbers but my old card scored 1100 points. Like being able to record stuff to my VCR and use the television as a display but I have to restart the computer each time I plug in the VCR or TV to the out jacks so that the card will recognize them. TV tuner is pretty good, I like watching cable on my 19 inch monitor and it comes with a remote which is great.
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