Guide+
ATI bundles the same version of Gemstar's Guide+ with the All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro as it did with the All-in-wonder Radeon 8500 DV, so nothing much has changed on that front. Guide+ lets you download weekly television listings for anywhere in North America based on your Zip or Postal Code, but it's a standalone application that's not tightly integrated into MultiMedia Center. That said, Guide+ does let you watch TV in a tiny window while you browse daily listings. Queuing up a show to record is as simple as selecting a desired program and clicking the "Record" option. It doesn't get much easier than that.

Click picture for a bigger image

While recording single programs or programs that repeat on a set schedule is easy with Guide+, and indeed with ATI's own recording scheduler within MultiMedia Center, the All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro's software lacks many features popularized by TiVo and other personal video recorders. One can't, for example, set the software to record all instances of "Law and Order," regardless of what time or channel they're on. Guide+ does sort sporting and movie content into a number of categories, and also lets the user browse through programs by actor, but that's as far as the software will go. Guide+ won't suggest new programs based on what's been previously watched or recorded, either. I suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing, since being forced to watch figure skating with a significant other may cause overly-enthusiastic PVR artificial intelligence to tape "Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood" the next time it's on the movie channel.

Despite its programming shortcomings when compared with devices like TiVo, Guide+ is still attractive because there's no one-time or monthly fee associated with downloading new listings. Consider the purchase of an All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro the price of admission for Guide+'s listing service, which is otherwise available free of charge once you have the software installed.

VideoSoap
When ATI officially launched the Radeon 9700 Pro, they showcased the card with a palette of visually stunning demos to highlight its awe-inspiring 3D capabilities and performance. Particularly impressive was a demo that used the Radeon 9700 Pro's pixel shaders to apply Photoshop-esque filters to a live video feed, stutter-free, in real time. The potential implications for video editing enthusiasts were huge, and immediately, I was looking forward to the All-in-Wonder incarnation of the Radeon 9700 Pro. The coolness factor of being able to use pixel shaders to power all sorts of wild effects is certainly high, but there are more practical applications of this technology that ATI makes available through its MultiMedia Center 8.0 software.

Because it lacks a Firewire port, the All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro will primarily be dealing with analog video streams. Depending on the source quality and transfer medium, those video streams may start with or pick up noise as they move from the original source to the All-in-Wonder's video input ports. To deal with this unwanted noise, ATI has leveraged the power of the Radeon 9700 Pro's pixel shaders with VideoSoap. Using the Radeon 9700 Pro GPU and between 5 and 20% of a CPU's resources, VideoSoap can layer up to four different soft focus, despeckle, sharpen, and combination filters of varying strengths to help clean up a noisy video signal. ATI also offers a number of different VideoSoap preset modes to cover settings that work best for news, sports, and other programming.

VideoSoap can improve the quality of MPEG1, MPEG1, and ATI VCR file formats, and it can also clean up incoming TV signals in real time if a cable connection has a few troublesome channels that need assistance. Unfortunately, VideoSoap presets can't be bound to individual channels, but that could change as the software matures beyond this initial release.

If mixing and matching up to four different de-noising filters sounds a little daunting, don't worry. ATI has made playing around with the settings pretty easy. In addition to the various preset options, you can also create your own VideoSoap presets, and view the results in a handy preview pane. To give VideoSoap a quick test, I connected the All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro to a nasty old TV cable to see what kind of impact VideoSoap could really have.

With even just one filter...

the results are dramatic

The left side of the above image is the filtered output, while the right side is the raw video signal. As you can see, even the careless application of a single video filter is enough to improve the quality of a sub-par video stream dramatically. Inexperienced users should have no problem coaxing a better picture out of a noisy video source, and video editing enthusiasts with the time and desire to fine tune their preferences should have a ball with the software.

It's pretty easy to get carried away with VideoSoap, which may not be necessary if incoming video feeds are high quality. If so, the filters can always be turned off or used sparingly, since the overzealous application of too many filters can actually make video streams look worse.