Today I got a message today from Cannon PC.  According to this message sales and support of the ATI card has been discontinued by AMD as of April 1st.  No new cards, no support, dead, dead, dead.

Here is the full text of the notice I got as well.....Kind of a shame, I love my tuner.

IMPORTANT NOTICE – ATI Digital Cable TV Tuners Discontinued

Effective Date: 04/01/2010

Warranty Policy on ATI Digital Cable Tuners

Effective April 1^st, 2010, ATI has discontinued both the internal and external versions of the ATI Digital Cable TV Tuner.  They have recalled all stock from distributors and no inventory is available from resellers or distributors.

Cannon PC was a reseller of these products and offered a 30 day warranty from defect on these products.  The manufacturer’s warranty on the ATI Digital Cable TV Tuner states that ATI offers a 1 year manufactures warranty.

Per our policy on non Cannon PC branded products, Cannon PC cannot repair nor refund any purchases of ATI Digital Cable TV Tuners since we do not manufacture or brand the units and the units have been discontinued by ATI and the product is longer available or supported.

If you have a defective ATI Digital Cable TV Tuner and need assistance, please contact ATI at the information listed below.

ATI Contact Information:

ATI
www.ati.com

PRODUCT INFORMATION
http://www.amd.com/us/products/pctv/tv-wonder-tuners/Pages/digital-cable-tuner.aspx

Warranty Services
http://support.amd.com/us/warranty/Pages/SupportWarrantyServices.aspx

 

Thank you,

Cannon PC

www.cannonpc.com

 Not a surprise at all

Hopefully CETON is able to speed up delivery to MC partners.

Mike Garcen

 Not a surprise at all

 

Seems odd to me that they recalled all stock,why not flood the market with the leftovers for $50-$100 and at least make some money on them rather than put them in a landfill.

Because they don't want to support the tuner anymore.

ATI could sell the inventory to a 3rd party without any warranty/support for say 10-25 cents on the dollar and then that reseller would most likely offer them up at 50 cents on the dollar. Will be interesting, once the dual tuner comes out from SD or Centon, will push the price on the ATI tuners down significantly (in the used market).

ATI didn't support these when they were selling them.  They supposedly only provided support to the integrators and resellers.  I had a tough time getting any support out of them through Dell.  Can't wait to get my CETON!

 I'm with the others - I find it curious that ATI recalled all stock given they didn't really support them, anyway.  I've been saying for a while I didn't think ATI was going to do any further development on them.

The only thing I can think of is ATI knows their tuners are going to be near-worthless once the Ceton card launches, so they would rather sell them all for a low price to some 3rd party before they can't dump them at all.

Actually now that I think about it, ATI sold off their TV tuner division to Broadcom.  My guess is Broadcom didn't want this, so ATI has gotten rid of all their other TV tuners - from that standpoint, it makes sense to pull this and get out of the market.

 So, is the only cablecard tuner for Media Center is the Ceton?  Are they actually shipping their units?  There seems to be more to this story than meets the eye.

Not surprised at all..  The crippling OEM only requirement at the beginning put such a sour taste in the mouths of most of MC users..   The majority of the MC fan base are folks that wanted to roll their own; to save money, customize, or just soup-up a monster rig...  and the powers at be just waited too long to lift that requirement...  For shame....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDN9y2vTdUs

It was just a matter of time....

Agreed - this is very sad news. Since the announcement of the OEM lift last Sep 2009, I've been looking forever to buy one of these ATI tuners. Now I see why they were impossible to get a hold of. Ceton looks great but its waay pricey for my budget. I'm also confused as to why no other company wanted to buy the technology out from ATI and sell it themselves. Now I'm stuck paying for HD cable but only being able to watch 2 HD channels with my current tuner. Bummer

We still have some if anyone needs them: http://www.s1digital.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=INTDCT

Paul

dzitran

Agreed - this is very sad news. Since the announcement of the OEM lift last Sep 2009, I've been looking forever to buy one of these ATI tuners. Now I see why they were impossible to get a hold of. Ceton looks great but its waay pricey for my budget. I'm also confused as to why no other company wanted to buy the technology out from ATI and sell it themselves. Now I'm stuck paying for HD cable but only being able to watch 2 HD channels with my current tuner. Bummer

Nobody else wanted to buy out the ATI product because of two reasons.  First, Ceton, Hauppauge, and SiliconDust are coming out with better products.  Second, the FCC is considering doing away with CableCARD and replacing it with AllVid.  If the decision is made final, December 31, 2012 is the deadline for implementing the AllVid gateway.  Once AllVid comes to your home, the CableCARD becomes worthless.

Until AllVid becomes the standard, ATI knows about the competition coming to the market...and they know they can't compete.  They wanted to charge $200-300 per card and you only get one stream.  The Ceton card can do 4 streams for $400.  SiliconDust announced a 2 stream device for $250 (yet to be on the market at this point).  The ATI card couldn't compete with that, and it would cost too much money to get another product certified, so I'm guessing they just gave up the fight.  So the last warranty will expire in about mid-2011, and shortly thereafter (if not before), we should see at least one TV provider start rolling out their AllVid solution.