| Diamond All-In-Wonder HD Premium AIW5000 |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |
| Written by Dan Ferguson | |
| Sunday, 27 February 2011 | |
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Diamond AIW5000 Multimedia Set
Manufacturer: Diamond Multimedia Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Diamond Multimedia. Now that Blu-Ray and 1080p are well entrenched into the entertainment industry, Diamond has released their latest update to the All-In-Wonder series. The HD Premium 5000 (aka AIW5000) bundles an ATI HD5570 graphics card with an ATI HD 750 tuner. This duo has the power to handle the most frequently used video signals for viewing, recording and other routine multimedia tasks. At Benchmark Reviews we are compelled to tweak, tune, stress and measure to see how well our new gadgets perform. The AIW5000 performed well; read on too see how we put it to work. Although the format war has been settled, the content delivery model is constantly being morphed. While cable and dish were once considered the standard, people are choosing from a myriad of new content delivery models. Ubiquitous broadband and wireless options are providing new and expanding channels through which to funnel your content. Even after choosing a delivery method you have to decide on some combination of hardware for interacting with your content. The combinations are almost endless, and the best fit depends on your personal needs or wants. Will you choose cable + DVR, Netflix + Wii, Hulu + PC, Blu-Ray + PS3, Amazon VOD + Roku, iTunes + iPad, Boxee + Something? I think you get the point. Regardless of the choice I don't think there is a single product out there that does everything a person could want. So most of us end up with some combination of multiple devices. Sometimes it is too hard to try and follow which technologies are in and which are on the way out. You can also get stuck with proprietary equipment that works in only one setup. Regardless of your setup there may be utility in a hardware package that can handle both your incoming and outgoing multimedia. I am a fan of the All-In-Wonder series since it is designed for that purpose. Two small cards in a PC of my choice allows me to handle all major forms of content delivery and gives me endless modification and display options. I can add drives and software of my choosing to build a custom setup without proprietary limits. Since I am always building on a budget the performance and cost matter greatly to me. In this review, performance, utility and cost will be the major factors for rating the AIW5000.
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Comments
Its just too bad that the Radeon HD 5570 part is going to be made a bit pointless as AMD's A-series (Llano) arrives sometime in June or so. It's GPU-based IGP is spec like a 5570, but from the charts I've seen; it performs a tad higher than a 5550 because of the shared memory bandwidth with the x86 cores.
The other part is with Diamond itself. They didn't make an effort on a solution that is thoughtful for the role that it was intended. It feels like they wanted to save as little money spent as possible.
They would be better off with a Mini-ITX mobo based on the Socket FM1 for A-series (Llano) Fusion APU and a digital/analog tuner integrated onto the motherboard.
Suddenly, here it is! Providence! Coincidence? Who cares?! It's All-In-Wonder!
So, why didn't Diamond put two receivers on the tiny card and add the minimal circuits to multiplex? Why didn't they go with a USB receiver that met the WMC spec? We all need one more remote don't we? Why do they push another god damned fan on HTPCs. Can't they passively cool their 5570. If not, why not a passively cooled 5550.
The single thing I like about this product is the possible way better signal sensitivity. Please write more about that aspect, not gaming.
Orville
thank you for your opinion. It sounds to me like you are calling for Diamond (and others) to expand their vision of a product and consider how it will most likely be deployed. I agree on your points on desired features. I don't need another remote.
This emphasizes my feeling that All-In-Wonder is best for a new or first-time builder and multitasker. If you already know your way around an HTPC and its peripherals then you'll probably want more features than an 'all in one', 'out-of-the-box' setup.
We try to balance our reviews around both the pros and cons of every product, highlighting areas of both that will most likely be of interest to our readers. What specifically do you like to know about signal integrity? Station capture is something to which everyone can relate.
I have a small home theater system that I use for watching live TV, playing movies from my NAS and surfing the Internet. My system consists of a home assembled PC, a 7.1 channel Sony AV receiver, a 5.1 Channel JBL speaker system, a Sharp 46†HDTV set and a homemade TV antenna perched on my second story roof.
The HTPC includes a Core i3 530 CPU on an MSI HD57M-ED65 motherboard with 2x2GB 1.35 volt DDR3-1333 memory. Drive C: is an Intel 80GB SSD. Drive D: is a WD 500GB 2½†HDD. The PC also includes a Blu-ray combo ODD. My graphics card is a Radeon HD 5450 with 512MG GDDR3. My tuner is a Hauppauge WinTV-2250 TV receiver card that is based on the NXP SAA7164E chip made on older 90nm lithography and released way back in 2006. My HTPC runs Windows 7 Home Premium. I use HDMI 1.3 to connect the HTPC to the AV receiver and the AV receiver on to the TV Set. The only functions of the AV receiver are to siphon off the audio stream and drive the 5.1 speaker system and multiplex the video stream on to the HDTV set.
I chose the Radeon HD 5450 made by PowerColor because I thought it would do the job and because it was passively cooled. So far it seems to be working OK.
The HTPC burns about 65 Watts, at the wall, when it is active no matter what I ask it to do. When it is hibernated it burns less than 1 Watt, near as my WattsUp? Pro can measure. The whole home entertainment system burns 300 Watts, at the wall, active and 130 Watts, at the wall, when the HTPC is hibernated.
I dislike very much having to use a goddamned keyboard to operate the home entertainment system, but since I want access to files on other PCs and NASs connected to my copper network using the Windows drive mapping method, and those files are password protected, I am forced to use password protection on the HTPC to get automatic connection to shares. Therefore, I hibernate the HTPC instead of shut it down because from hibernation it will resume to the desktop without requiring a keyboard logon.
My home theater has two glaring weaknesses. The first is Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium as it relates to home entertainment. It is pure #, in my opinion. The second is the lack of sensitivity of the Hauppauge WinTV-2250 TV receiver. I live near the epicenter of Houston, TX. There, the blessed NXP SAA7164E chip does not do a decent job of picking up even the major TV channels. It really sucks.
I tried out Dish Network last year, but their fraudulent over-billing practice led me to send their receiver back after three months of double billing. I didn't find out about the class-action lawsuit against them until after it was already settled. Anyway, I'm making do with my homemade OTA antenna and I read every article like yours with interest. If you have any suggestions relating to better TV reception I would welcome them.
Thanks again for your article on the Diamond AIW5000,
Orville