Rating: 
Summary: Good? Bad? Bugs?
Review: I have seen many reviews on this card, i have found that the 8500DV card and drivers are very unstable. when the tv is playing it will freeze the picture or go dark and the sound keeps playing, must reboot as it freezed whole computer except sound continues to play. problem with IE and using the transparecy feature - or even rezizing the tv/video frame causes instability. I am using winxp pro w/ srv pk 1 and all updates installed - it is an ok card if you only use it for video display only. Also, card freezes system while playing tiger woods 2003 - sound continues to play but system is locked up. must reboot - i haven't tried other games yet as i am fearful of locking up. why doesn't ATI offer trade in trade up cards for problem issues??? that is an excellent way to keep their customer base satisfied and bugs to a min.Overall, the card gets a 3 of 5 but a 1 of 5 when it comes to price vs. performance. Good luck.
Rating: 
Summary: love this card to pieces
Review: i LOVE this video card; i had some problems wiht installing the drivers, but then 99% of the time you HAVE to get new drivers online anyway; everything is easy to use and picture quality is great. Although geforce4 ti is probably better for gaming, this radeon ran quite well when i used it for neverwinter nights; it was ok for CS, but i love what multimedia activities i could do! only disappointment is i couldnt rip copyrighted vhs and dvds.hehe but that's another story. This card isnt perfect, but it beats all other tv cards hands down. I tried the pinnacle pctv before this and that sorry excuse for a peice of electronic equipment didn't even work, my computer said "device couldn't start." The free software is easy to use and includes an bundle of accessories, and a free CS! I definately recommend spending a little more $$ on this card rather than getting cheaper tv tuner; for those who want their sanity still after trying to install non ati tv tuners.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad product. Horrible drivers
Review: I purchased this product to upgrade my old all-in-wonder card. I love ATI for their wonderfully multi-functional cards but they really need to do a better job of writing software for them. I tried to install this card on Windows 2000 with all the latest drivers and with the exact instructions (after reading another review here) for each driver. The end result was video with vertical lines on both the DVD player and the TV software. Spent 4 more days trying to fix the problem but just gave up in the end and went back to my old ATI card. I might try the Radeon 7500 in the near future (since I suspect that the "DV" output of the card had something to do with my problems).
Rating:
Summary: Still frustrating after all these years
Review: I received by 8500DV and installed it on my fully up to date XP system. The driver install died and my system reported the current display resolution was 1x1. I didn't punish myself by trying the install again but instead installled the updated drivers I had (apparently wisely) downloaded before the install attempt. I was unable to watch TV even though a cheap TV attached to the same cable worked fine. Tech support was polite and organized but reported that the "tuner must have problems,guess you'll have to send it back". Just what every new customer wants to hear. I have no idea what happened. The tuner just started working, well kinda. The same signal that produces fine pics on my other 4 TVs is snowy and wiggly. Then I tried to get ULead VideoStudio working. Oh, I should mention that both the ATI and the ULead tech support calls were on my dime (actually my $5 bill). Ulead VideoStudio 6 would not successfully initialize. It repeatedly reported that some MPEG driver failed to load. I found a half dozen unanswered queries about the problem on the ULead support forum. ULead (who still uses .ini files) offered a reality challenging explanation about "other applications messing up the PATH defintion". I'll spare you the details. Copy all the files from the Program Files\Common Files\Ulead Systems\MPEG to the WINDOWS\System32 directory on your XP system. I should mention that ULead had no hand in this solution. I tried this while on the phone with tech support and found it worked so don't blame them. I have intermittently tried ATI stuff over the years. In days past, their drivers crashed my systems and, when I finally got them working, the harware was WOW. There is a pattern here. Unlike NVidia, ATI offers half-baked drivers, installation and bundled software with their awesome hardware (Yes, I LOVE this board, even the basic appearance of my desktop is a cut above my old NVidia GForce 2 board). NVidia, on the other hand seems to deliver chips and drivers that work pretty consistently (even with boards they don't manufature). Darn, if someone could just get it all together in one place at one time.....
Rating: 
Summary: Fun video card, but difficult drivers update on Win2K
Review: I uprgraded to this in order to play No One Lives Forever 2 because my old RivaTNT wasn't supported. The reviews recommended either GeForce4 Ti or the ATI 8500. A comparison of models and prices led me to the All-in-Wonder 8500DV. I liked the idea of the TV tuner, as I had one years ago, but it didn't survive the upgrade to Win98 (but that's another story).
The original install on my Win2K machine went almost as smooth as expected. It wouldn't let me run the driver install before installing the card, and then when I did install the card, it popped up a dozen or so "found new hardware" dialogs. It finally stopped that, and I was able to run the installer. Everything seemed to be OK, but I went directly to the ATI website and got the latest drivers. 5 out of the 6 download options were newer than the ones on the CD, so I tried doing the updates. BIG MISTAKE. The upgrade instructions were confusing (ok, so I didn't look at them too closely, I DON'T NEED TO READ INSTRUCTIONS!) about when to reboot and when to say no to the prompts. I went ahead and let it reboot at the wrong time, and I got a dozen or so "found new hardware" messages, this time no amount of pointing at the CD, the downloaded files, the windows directory, etc would recognize these devices as having ANY valid drivers. Bummer. Re-install from the CD. Redo the updates without rebooting at the wrong times. Bingo! Everything works except two drivers. I had to go to control panel and "update driver" manually. This time it found the correct driver in the Windows directory. Finally it worked.
(Now, back to playing NOLF2. It was happy with the video card, but the intro video was choppy. The game plays pretty smooth, not great, but good. Reading through the tech support stuff, I find I need more system RAM to fix that. We'll see if that helps.)
As for the features of the 8500DV, the TV tuner is great. I really like the pause TV, especially with a second window open of the live video, it works better than picture-in-picture. The RF remote control works fine, but the mouse movement seems sluggish and I can't find a speed setting for it. I intend to route some cables from the computer to the living room TV and see how good that looks. Svideo length limit is supposed to be 35', I think it should reach.
Rating:
Summary: Problem to record Video in my camcorder
Review: I was able to record any video produced with Ulead Video or Adobe Premier using the IEEE 1394 port using another 1394 card I had installed.
When I installed this new card, I removed my old 1394 card to use the new 1394 port included in the ati radeon 8500 dv card.
Now I can capture video without problems, but, when I try to record video to my camcorder using Ulead Video or Adobe Premier, is not working.
The answer from ATI support is that the firewire port (1394) is for input only.
Rating:
Summary: Great deal...
Review: I was surprised to read a lot of the bad reviews (after I bought the card)! I had absolutely NO problems installing this card on a W2K box w/ SP4. I've converted almost all of my (deathly-boring-home) VHS tapes to DV, edited them, and burned DVD's with only a few "reboots" and those were mostly Explorer related (right-clicking on 3+ Gb files too quickly w/ preview on can make Windows a bit unhappy!). The TV also worked great with no problems. The drivers that came packed with the card worked fine, but I quickly upgraded them anyway (out of habit) from the ATI site. I'm not sure why my install went so smooth compared to others - my machine is a dual-850Mhz HP Kayak w/ 512Mb RDRAM and it's usually pretty picky about what I install.
Rating:
Summary: DON'T GET THIS!
Review: OK, amazon.com is completely wrong. It says this card is worth [$$$] give or take five cents. The new one, supposedly comming out in August or September, is much better, and is going to be at a retail price of [$$$]. Itis MUCH better, and definately worth the wait. HOWEVER, if you must buy a new graphics card now, you should get the NVIDIA ti 4600 by VISION TREK. Not, by PNY, their customer service is very bad, even though they give a very good warranty. (Even read other reviews about PNY consumers). The NVidia 4600 is much better than the ATI 8500, however again, when the ATI 9700 comes out, that will take the crown. Until than, the NVidia 4600 is proudly wearing it.
Rating:
Summary: no longer supported.
Review: Setup absolutely sucks no install help.
Rating:
Summary: NOTICE
Review: Someone mentioned maybe trying an ATI Radeon 7500. If you get the All In Wonder Version many of them DO NOT come with a cooling fan on the card!!! Believe me, with this much power you NEED a cooling fan. Always check the ATI site and click on their 'large' picture image and make sure you get a cooling fan with EVERY card, built in. I have a 7500 without AIW and it works 100% great and runs cool with the factory fan on the card.
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