WHAT IS THE ATI TV WONDER?
The ATI Wonder VE is ATI's entry level TV Tuner card for your PC, though the only limitation that this card has which warrants the VE (value edition) name is that audio playback is mono. The card installs in a PCI slot in your PC, and allows you to watch television on your monitor. The Wonder VE does NOT replace your video display card, as do the more expensive ATI
All in Wonder video cards, but works with your existing video display card by sending the TV image to the display card, "overlaying" a scaleable TV image on the display generated by your video card. Some of the video cards the Wonder VE works claims to be compatible with include cards made by ATI, 3Dfx, S3, and NVidia. The Wonder VE can also record shows to your hard drive for later playback and capture still images.
"In the box" is the Wonder VE video card, an audio loopback cable for routing the audio signal from the TV card to an input on your sound card, one CD enclosed in a white envelope containing installation and application files, and an easy to follow 40 page quick install guide.
I purchased the TV Wonder for ~$20 after rebates from Compusa about two years ago, for my son's old computer, a 500 mhz Pentium III system with an Abit BE6 motherboard and Geforce 2 video card running Windows ME. More recently, I replaced his system with a 2.4 ghz Dell 4550 running Windows XP, with a Geforce 4 420MX video card and Soundblaster Live sound card. The TV Wonder worked as advertised in both systems, though I had to download the beta version 7.6 ATI Multimedia Center before the TV Wonder worked correctly on the Dell system (it often came up with a lot of "interference", and I had to change my screen resolution to get a clean picture with the old drivers). Just this month, ATI posted version 7.9 of the Multimedia Center, which I have downloaded, and both versions, the beta version 7.6 and version 7.9, work well on a 2.4ghz Dell 4550 PC. I've also installed the card in an 750 mhz Athlon system with a ASUS K7M motherboard running Windows ME, but the TV display would lock up after only a few seconds of use in this system. (I eventually installed a
Averdmedia AverTV card card on this system, which worked well)
Installation and Setup
I most recently installed the software and TV tuner card in a Dell 4550 included 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4, 256 mb ram, Soundblaster Live, Geforce 4 420MX video card, and 30 gb hard drive running Windows XP home, having previously used the card successfully in a 500 mhz pentium II system and a 266mhz pentium II system running Win 98.
As with many video display cards, installation starts with installing the hardware prior to the software. The TV Wonder card is installed in an open PCI slot. After closing up your computer's case, I connected my cable TV cable to a coaxial connection on the back of the TV Wonder card. One end of the included audio cable is then attached to the audio output of the TV Wonder card, and the other end is inserted into the "line in" or "microphone" input jack on your sound card.
NOTE: The audio signal must be routed through your sound card to be able to get audio playback
After you start your computer back up, Windows will detect the new hardware, and try to install new drivers for the hardware. At this point, you'll need cancel to carefully follow ATI's instructions for installing the ATI software. The installation procedure varies with each driver/ATI MultiMedia Center version, but the general procedure is to first install several drivers for the TV Wonder Card, and then install the ATI MultiMedia Center, which includes softare for TV viewing, and VCD, DVD, and audio playback. The latest version of drivers and ATI Multimedia Center on the ATI website (version 7.9) installed very smoothly, though older version have required a tedious installation of several drivers in a stepwise fashion. I strongly recommend getting the latest version of ATI's software or at least the beta version 7.6 drivers if you purchase and are installing at TV Wonder card on a system running Windows XP. I've found that older versions of the drivers work ok with Windows 98 or Windows ME.
After installation is complete, you'll find the ATI Launchpad on your desktop, in the form of a new toolbar "docked" to the right side of your screen, with buttons to launch your TV viewer, a DVD/VCD player, a music CD player, file player, and the ATI Library application which will find and catalog all of the media files on your hard drive(s). You can also setup the launch pad as a small tool bar which "floats" on your desktop.
Watching TV
When you first launch the TV player, you'll need to scan for channels, which the software will do automatically. The tuner software found all the 50 or so available channels on my cable system in a couple of minutes. You be able to "lock out" any channel and password protect the lock, and "name" each channel, which will be display on the tuner controls in addition to the channel number.
The video quality is ok, similar to other TV tuner cards I have used (
PCTV Pro and
AverTV Desktop TV PVR) and reminds me a lot of watching broadcast TV with an antenna. If you plan to use your TV card to watch TV in a small window floating on your desktop while browsing or running other applications, you'll be very pleased. If you want to watch TV full screen on your monitor, you'll find the quality to be OK, but not as sharp as the display on a good television set.
After launching the tuner, you'll see the video display window on your desktop, adjustable in size. You'll also see a separate control panel, futuristic in appearance (and with a few skins) with channel buttons, a volume slider, and buttons to access the channel surf function, recording, still picture capture, channel lock options, volume mute, and last channel recall. The channel surf button breaks your TV display window into small sections and displays a screen capture from each channel, allowing you to look for a different program from all thats available and select that program by clicking on the screen capture. Unfortunately, the screen captures in the channel surf display all have a yellow tint, as do all screen captures you save to your hard disk.
ATI Library
This is a fairly useful application which now comes with ATI Multimedia center. The Library will search for and list all media files on your hard drive, and sort them by date or type. You can also select files from the Library and create a playlist of those files, and send that playlist to and launch your default media player (MusicMatch, Windows Media Player, etc).
Recording
You have a couple of options for recording video, a "one touch" record button on the control panel, or using the ATI scheduler, record a show by entering the time, channel, show duration, recording quality, and select a repeat option (none, record daily or weekly, etc). Setting up the scheduler is very easy, with a step by step procedure where you enter your settings. You can also use the ATI scheduler to start the TV tuner, cd player, or any of the other options in the multimedia center.
The ATI software offers several default options for recording quality, including 352 X 240 MPG1 video files that require 10mb (VCD quality) to 60mb (DVD quality) of disk space per minute of video. Custom settings for better or worse quality can also be set up. Even though the higher setting is called DVD quality, it doesn't match or come close to DVD's though it does come close to VCR/VHS quality. Even VCD quality looks ok when played back full screen on your monitor. You can also record in MPEG2 format. I've tried to set up the software to record and encode to DivX AVI files, but the compression was very poor, worse than the MPG files.
Support
Online techinical support on the ATI website is pretty good, as there are frequent driver updates and a few useful FAQ's. Phone support (a toll number) is free for the first 30 days, and $2 a minute afterwards via a 900 number.
Should you buy this TV Tuner card?
Yes. I've used TV cards from Pinnacle Systems, ATI, and AverMedia. I like the Avermedia software a lot, it includes a few "Tivo like" options, which ATI does not offer. The ATI software is better than Pinnacle's software, and I find the ATI video recording quality is slightly better than Avermedia's, (and I have never had much luck being able to record from my Pinnacle Systems TV card). Except for the problems I had getting this TV Wonder VE card to work in an Athlon system, I have found it to be fairly stable, especially with the latest drivers. It works with with both ATI (Rage Pro) and Nvidia (Geforce2 450 TI, and Geforce4 420MX) video cards that I have tried.
