ATI TV Wonder™ VE (100-703102) Video Capture

Background...

Have you ever wanted to watch tv while your surfing the net or working on your computer? Or have you ever wanted to edit your own home movies right on your own computer?

If you've answered yes to either of these questions, then the ATI TV-Wonder VE just might be the answer to both of those burning questions as it does allow you to pull any kind of tv, VCR/DVD or camcorder signal right into your computer. The card also allows you to capture and record images, scenes and programs for later use. And this would be great, if the card itself would work with some consistency.

Purchase & Installation...

In the spring of 2001, I purchased this card from London Drugs for approximately $85 Canadian. I took it home and installed it on a Pentium 2 400Mhz computer with 196 MB Ram and a Creative Savage 4 32MB Video Card, with an up-to-date version of Windows 98 Plus! SE installed on it (if you read my review on November 8, I said I had installed it on a Pentium 3 system - but I forgot that there were a few short months in late 2000 / early 2001 where I was actually setup under a Pentium 2 system). ATI claims that this will work on Pentium 1 systems and up, but I found that this claim is more hit and miss then anything else.

The card itself is like a video card, only not. What it does do is process tv signals to work with your video card: to allow you to watch tv on your computer. It plugs into any free PCI slot you have, and once inside your comptuer with the software installed, you can hook a normal cable-tv cord up to it - and voila - you're ready to begin watching tv.

So the installation went fine for me, in terms of both the hardware and the software. The instructions that came with it were very fool-proof, making the process very easy for even the most unsavy of technical users. And the installation programs did recognize and say that the card was connected and working properly. Overall, everything seemed to be working fine during the install process.

But when I went to actually use the program to watch tv on my computer, it would immediately freeze upon starting its own version of auto-tuning (when the program goes through every channel to see what is there).

What?!? A problem...

To solve this problem from freezing my computer, I would end up having to reboot my computer, only to have it begin this auto-tuning process again, and of course, only to freeze up again. A few times it would get through this process, but then it would ultimately freeze up when I went to change channels.

At first I thought it maybe a problem with my video card, but there shouldn't have been one, as I am able to use it with my Creative 12x DVD to watch DVD movies which always look sharp, crisp and clean. So I tooled around with the program a lot, even formated my hard-drive and reinstalled Windows from scratch, selectively reinstalling my programs to ensure there weren't any conflicts. But I could never get it to work past this constantly annoying and re-occurring problem.

I ended up e-mailing ATI, who were as helpful as they could be; and I consulted directly with the store I bought it from. Unfortunately, neither ATI nor the store were able to provide any solutions that I hadn't already tried on my own. Also, I visited a number of online bulletin boards and found similar problems with other users. Basically, there seemed to be two groups of people with this card: 1. Those who had it working fine, and 2. Those who didn't.

And from what I remember, those who didn't have it working never were able to get it working. And I heard similar stories at the store itself from the salesperson, who said some people had no problems and other people did. They even let me exchange the card twice, to no avail. This series of card just wouldn't work on my system. And I have no reason why as all the reasons seemed to elude me.

In the end, I ended up returning the card and its programs for a full refund, and I have yet to venture back into the world of watching tv and editing video on my computer. Although I do now have a Pentium 3 system with 512MB of RAM and Windows XP Pro installed, with a Maxtor 120MB hard drive, so I am at the point where I am ready to start fiddling with video on my computer again.

Other Features???

The ATI card also features an S-Video input, so you can pull in images from your video camera, VCR or even DVD (if you don't have an internal drive already installed), and this card also gives you the ability to experience stereo sound on their computer while watching TV.

Also, if you do plan on editing video after capturing scenes or images with this card, you are going to have to purchase your own video editing program, as there are none bundled with this card: the only software that does come with it is the software that allows you to watch and record stuff. They probably don't include this software as a way of keeping the price down.

Final Recommendations...

Now, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't try this product out if you want to watch tv on your computer. The ability to watch TV on your computer can be an asset for many people - especially dorm students, savy seniors, or other people without much space. So I do recommend purchasing it and trying it out, as I have seen it on other Pentium 2 and 3 systems where it has worked fine. Basically it seems, you won't know if it works on your system until you've tried it. Also, there are currently newer drivers and software updates available from ATI for use with this card, so I can only assume that they have solved the problems that I and so many others have had with this card.

Around this time, I also tried the Pinnacle PCTV Tuner Card, and had similar problems. Although I was able to get that card to flow through all the channels, it would still occaisionally freeze up on me (enough that it did make using the product annoying, and I ended up just returning it for my money back as well). In the end, the bad luck I had with these kinds of low-end tv tuner cards just doesn't allow me to strongly recommend them to anyone.

If you are looking for a product of this nature, I'd suggest checking out ATI's wide-range of All-In-Wonder video cards, which are now very reasonably priced. All of these cards are actually true video cards with the capability to send and receive video images, and the ability to edit them as they all have software bundled that will do this. And from what I have read, heard and seen, the latest versions in the All-In-Wonder series are very good cards that actually do work very well.

So, come springtime 2003, I personally plan on purchasing either the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV or the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9700 Pro. All in the hopes of being able to finally do what I want to do: watch tv & edit video images on my computer.

Grade for this Product: C -