Reviews for ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Works well - IF you have the time

Strengths: Hardware is fine with Windows Media Center - otherwise don't waste your time

Weakness: Need to spend hours to get it to work well

I have an Athlon 64 2500 (Barton processor) with this card and another analog card, Windows Media Center and a great fat TV antenna (RCA 100+element VHF/UHF) on the roof. This setup is then my DVR and surf box. I don't use the computer for anything else. This is a lot cheaper than HDTV from the cable company but of course I miss all those other channels. The picture is displayed on my Sanyo PLVZ4 at 7 feet wide and I have a fairly cheap sound card with optical out for the 5.1 sound. Overall this is a fantastic setup for the price but...

Cons:
It took me days and days of reading on AVSForum and the like to get it all configured.

When the weather is bad the reception goes to digital blocks and then completely out.

After many attempts with other software I think Windows Media Center is the only way to go.

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Awesome Card I should have bought two and used new...

Strengths: HD Attenna and remote Included awesome HDTV experience and quality. SDTV and HDTV capture ability

Weakness: Poor Windows Driver support. TV software is obsolete dont bother with it use windows media center. Single tuner not a dual tuner.

I bought it to add to my Home theater PC as the third TV card. After plugging it in to the computer I had a difficult time installing driver and getting window media center to recognize the device. However when I researched this card at the time it was suppose to get the best HD reception since more power being outputted to the antenna connectors plus its the only one with an antenna included. There is suppose to even be a way to use both tuners with win xp mce. Eventhough i had an extremely difficult time installing it once i got it running I was able to full take advantage of my media center with SD-TV and HDTV.

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By member: bdubslawman - Feb 1, 2009

To enable full functionality this requires some...

Strengths: HDTV wonder OTA - Hybrid tuner - decent package for the ~$50 price range

Weakness: $130+ for an Alpha-Beta status product, software encoding that MCE2005 didn't at 1st support (ati added drivers later), Hacked KRAM drivers needed to enable analog tuner of HDTV wonder in MCE 2005

LOL to the last comment. See that's what's so great. Is as time goes on, things like drivers improve on both ends (ATI & Microsoft). So a person buying this card HOT off the presses in 2004 and comparing that to a user who buys it in mid 2005, or later 2006, 2007 ...well they have a VASTLY different experience.

THE TREND: With computer hardware is RUSH the hardware...work out the bugs later in software updates. It's true for TV Tuner cards, Graphics cards and ESPECIALLY motherboards.

But if you are an AVERAGE consumer you look at products, and say I WANT HDTV, you read the magazine reviews and you get sold so you buy one. Then you find out that installing the software from the CD included gets you about 50-75% percent functionality. and introduces new things like TV-ON-Deman ALWAYS ON in DTV (HD OTA tuning with this card). There are problems with the encoding causing stuttering (100% unrelated to system hardware) there are issues with recording blah blah blah.

Did those people that bought these cards in 2004-2005 have every right to think and believe that spending $130-$150 on an HDTV Wonder that CLAIMED to do all the things on the box SHOULD in fact be able to do them? YOUR DARN TOOTING THEY DID!

At that time the HDTV Wonder and All of ATI's software encoded (vs hardware encoded) TV tuning or All-In-Wonder cards were not compatible with Windows MCE 2005... In early 2005 ATI w/ Microsoft developed software drivers that would allow these products to work....A SELLING POINT THAT ATI NOW CLAIMED. ****HOWEVER, ATI FAILED TO MENTION that the HDTV wonder in MCE 2005 ONLY WORKED AS A DTV (HDTV OTA Antenna ...and the Analog tuner was NOT-FUNCTIONAL AT ALL!!!!) Further it required at first a compatible hardware encoded card....later this worked with the All-IN-Wonder cards as the analog tuner (even though they were still software encoded the driver improvements ATI & MS made made this possible).

NOW around that time the KRAM drivers and a hacked setup became available (0% support from ATI or MS) but these hacked KRAM drivers did in 2005 and still today allow the HDTV wonder to be used either as an analog tuner or an HDTV tuner (either one or the other not both at the same time) in MCE 2005. So finally enabling it to be used as a dual tuner analog set up.

So, don't be hating on people that bought these cards and gave up on them in 2004-2005. Many kept the cards and kept HOUNDING ATI TO FIX IT!!!! in forums like 3drage, hexus, the green button, avs forums, etc. are why your later 2005 to present installations were SO MUCH EASIER!

ATI made a lot of dramatic changes to its software and drivers and didn't explain or share or bother to get input from the people that buy there products and were there PAYING ALPHA & BETA testers. They changed the drivers from WDM-SP to WDM-NSP without explaining to the people the effects / issues.
And when in the Catalyst 6.3 Driver they went to a T200 Unified digital driver they presented it like it was an ORDINARY UPDATE...not telling people that it would stop the functioning of there MMC 9.08 and before systems.

ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, USER ERROR, BAD HARDWARE
8/10 times it was ATI's BAD DRIVERS software, and it's bad software installation in that it doesn't fully delete the files and more importantly the registry entries...so if you end up getting into a problem with digital vs analog drivers and NSP vs SP etc. you can't even count on ATI's add or remove programs to un-install itself to properly start over.

COME ON!

DON'T BE BLAMING USERS FOR ATI'S AND MICROSOFT'S DESIGNS!
Some experienced plug and play setups depending on the drivers they got on the CD or downloaded from ATI. But realize that not every one knows what they should be getting or experiencing from the card as well and not everyone that writes a review (read above) uses every single function of a card. Just as a TV viewer is vastly different that a fully functioning PVR which is what it's capable of and what ATI sold it as, and blue scrrens, crashes, failed recordings, out of sync audio/video, stuttering is Not RIGHT!


This improved right up until Catalyst 6.3 and MMC9.08...after that w/ the T200 drivers TV on Demand was part of MMC 9.13-9.16 for all analog tuner HDTV wonder or All-In-wonder... it COULD/CAN be disabled temporarily via a registry hack...but simply changing the input from Tuner to composite or S-Video to inport video (Home movies) or video games etc. and then switching back to Tuner enables it again & you have to go back in and change it each & every time or run a script to do it.... They were BAD Designs trying to marry the analog HDTV wonder, All-in-Wonder, TV Wonder lines (Software) with the Hardware encoded TV wonder elite (550) and the Tv Wonder 650 both hardware encoded.

There might have been SOME light at the end of the tunel with 9.17 etc but AMD bought out ATI and KILLED THE ALL-IN-WONDER PROGRAM, leaving us all high and dry.

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won't work

Strengths: ?

Weakness: support

I could not get it to work and there is NO support,no help in anyway.I bought it through Dell and they can't help and the help phone number from genco is always busy.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Excellent HDTV quality.

Weakness: You need to download the newest driver from the web. Check the compatibility of your computer before you buy it. I installed windows xp sp2 before i install the driver for this card.

Overall it is an excellent HDTV card. It would be great if it can record TV like Tivo(I have not checked it out yet). The quality of cable TV and HDTV is great. I feel the sound in HDTV mode is a little bit weak compared to the cable TV. Be patient with the installation. It is better you have high speed conection to install the driver file 3 for now.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Super high quality picture and sound

Weakness: difficult installation, problematic software

On the picture quality alone this is a good product. But, it still needs lots of work. Someday soon these HDTV cards will be plug-n-play. Install software was a pain (read all dialogs carefully - tricky). Can't turn off rewind feature (constant hardrive use, and CPU hog). Touchy sometimes, has crashed more than once. Analog TV tuner softare hasn't worked, but then in Chicago all stations are digital now, so I miss nothing. Great options for recording. Remote is handy. I did not use included ant. Best if used with rooftop ant. Could use analog audio connector for SB cards. Works best with 3GHz+ CPU, 1GB+ RAM, and fast HD. Next gen will be super I hope. Good hardware, weak software.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Great HDTV reception, not easy setup if your system has certain configurations

Weakness: software not completely stable yet, recorded shows have slight video/audio out of sync

I tried installing this on a PC from which I removed a different brand tuner card and it was VERY unhappy. I did a fresh install of windows xp sp1 and installed it in that system and it was fine EXCEPT for a crashing problem. This problem was because I had a 2.8ghz Hyper-Threaded processor and is a problem with windows xp; not with the ATI Stuff. I upgraded my box to windows xp sp2 (which contains the Microsoft fix) and that seemed to fix 99% of the stability issues.

I still get a periodic freeze of the TV program (not the digital/HDTV one though) but not very often. Also recording shows left me a file with the audio and video ever so slightly outof sync -- it was enough to make it tough to watch people talk and their lips not match the words (maybe .5 secs or so).

I got this card so I can record HDTV and burn it to DVD which I have not tried doing yet; but will be done shortly. Overall a decent card for the money. Hopefully software updates and driver updates will fix the minor stability issues.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Easy of installation, great picture.

I run XP SP2. Already had an ATI 9800 Pro installed with latest drivers. Put the HDTV card in and ran the reccomended auto install. Rebooted and everything worked great! Another reviewer stated high CPU, I do not see this. My system is 3.00Ghz Hyperthread and the MMC app used around 20% of the CPU. I plan on getting a second one for my other system.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: HDTV is really great.

Weakness: Debugging installation quirks can be a challenge.

Before I installed this card, I installed an AGP x8 video card that supports hardware MPEG encoding and decoding (DXVA support). In my case, I got an ATI 9550 card, which not only has DXVA, but will drive two monitors (which I'm using). The DXVA will unload a lot of processing from yor CPU. Also, the 9550 supports two monitors. It's great to have the TV on one screen, and be doing something else on the other monitor. Another AGP card you can try is the x800 Platinum edition / AGP version. If I were going to do this again, I would start with a PCI express graphics card and motherboard, just to be sure of adequate system performance. I would not recommend a PCI video card based on the first generation standard (i.e. a card that is not PCI express). I don't think it will have the bandwith. And, you need Windows XP. I don't have XP SP2. I installed it previously, and it caused me nothing but problems. Since I uninstalled SP2, I've been satisfied with the way things are. When I installed the HDTV card, I also stripped out all the old ATI drivers (using the ATI uninstall utility from the ATI website), and installed all the latest drivers and software. Also, I had a problem with the system locking up after 10 minutes of use and/or the screen blanking out. I never had this problem with the previously installed ATI TV Wonder Pro tuner card. After setting the AGP size to 4MB in my bios (which is the SMALLEST setting available, and took me about 30 reboots before I got around to trying), everything seems to be very stable. Also, the enclosed antenna is a nice "teaser" to see what over-the-air digital TV looks like (and it really looks great). However, I could get only a few of the locally available stations here in Houston, so I'm going to have to get a more sophisticated antenna setup (how much more sophisticated and expensive, I'm not sure). As with all over-the-air broadcasting, your reception depends on a lot of factors, and the antenna is certainly a factor. I gave this card a 4. It is very good, and I would purchase a card like it again.

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Good PVR for over-the-air HDTV

Strengths: free EGP, recording HDTV in native format, fast encode

Weakness: Bad GUI, difficult to install software

Recommended for computer savvy, but not novice because the cumbersome UI. Remote wonder doesn't work for HDTV program. Everything else works great. You need to get a better antenna to receive DTV signal at constant 4~5 bar (0 is the lowest, 5 is the highest) strength.

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Great when used Properly!

Strengths: Quality of picture, ease of setup/use, endless possibilities.

Weakness: Few with the actual product (below).

First of all, If you don't know how to install a PCI card, hire a professional, or a qualified freelance agent (nerd). Also, DO NOT underestimate the system specs, HDTV isn't something a 386 will handle easily (at all). Take advantage of driver updates, and don't be afraid of them! Mine came with the most recent driver updates (April). Many "problems" are caused by poor reception. I live ~35 miles from the broadcast towers and the supplied antenna paired with a $15 amplifier worked better (and easier) than a store bought amplified antenna. I run XP Media Center Edition 2005 and it works great when recording programs in HD then burn to DVD or watch them.

CHECK THE DATES ON THESE REVIEWS. Anything in 2004, throw out. ATI has made strides in the compatibility issues many early users mentioned.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Very good signal reception and picture quality.

Weakness: The card can’t be used for HDTV cable and HDTV satellite signals.

A antenna and a easy-to-use remote control are included. BTW, to use this card, your graphic card must support Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and has at least 64MB memory. This is a great product, it changed my Dell 24" 2405FPW LCD to a HDTV! HDTV is really wonderful! It's worth the moeney.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Easy to install. Went to ATI's web site to get the latest drivers. Excellent picture quality. Will capture in MPEG, AVI, and WMV.

Weakness: I had to set a environment setting for the tv to work (ATI's web site explains this). Other than that I love it.

I don't know why so many people had a hard time with this.

I have a P4 3.8GHZ machine ATI 850 XT PE video card 500GB of hard drive space. This thing runs at about 6% with watching 1080i or 720p. I get about 11 stations in Utah and my antenna is downstairs. I am so amazed by that.

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Fun little card

Strengths: great quality images

Weakness: none

I bought this recently, hooked it up to my XP system and it started working, quite painlessly. The HD image is quite high quality, and audio is also very good. No complaints so far. I will be hooking it up to my stereo system at some point and experient a little with the possibilities.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Nice bundle of Remote Wonder, antennae, and breakout box. Does not have the HDTV Broadcast Flag.

Weakness: Sluggish performance. Uses > 30% CPU with P4 2.8 GHz. Audio skips despite excellent reception. Requires a modern 3D graphics card. Immature drivers. Will not work with HD over Cable TV (HBO, ESPN)

Was getting high CPU usage on a system with onboard video enabled. Moved it to another computer where I could disable onboard video and it worked better. Also, this will not work with Windows MCE 2005 unless a separate analog tuner is installed as well. Overall, this didn't work as well as I hoped. A friend also has this card and he uses the MCE 2005 software instead and insists it works much better.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: When the video is not stalling and audio popping, the image looks great.

Weakness: Drivers on CD did not work. Consumes 90 to 95% of the CPU. Their tech support web site is little help.

After installing the card and software, their HDTV app would not run. It reported a problem with a video driver. They did give any more details about which driver or what the problem was. They did give you the option to run their diagnostic program. This app let me know about my system, like speed of CPU, memory installed, sound card and various other useless facts. This was zero help diagnosing a driver issue. After visiting the ATI web site and downloading >50MB of new drivers, the DTV tuner started working. Then the next problem arose, high CPU utilization. Even with a 2.8GHz P4 with 1GB of memory, ATI’s Multimedia Studio was averaging 95% of the CPU. Another visit to ATI’s website yielded their 9 tips to get their app from hogging the system. (At least they are aware of the problem.) I competed all the tasks, like installing SP2, upgrading my BIOS, turning off virus scanning,…but nothing helped. I’m not looking forward to going through the hassle of returning this unit. So overall, it you want to experience HDTV skip this but if you like to tinker with your computer for hours then by all means buy it.

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Reply by member: bdubslawman
Feb 1, 2009

LOL to the last comment. See that's what's so great. Is as time goes on, things like drivers improve on both ends (ATI & Microsoft). So a person buying this card HOT off the presses in 2004 and comparing that to a user who buys it in mid 2005, or later 2006, 2007 ...well they have a VASTLY different experience.

THE TREND: With computer hardware is RUSH the hardware...work out the bugs later in software updates. It's true for TV Tuner cards, Graphics cards and ESPECIALLY motherboards.

But if you are an AVERAGE consumer you look at products, and say I WANT HDTV, you read the magazine reviews and you get sold so you buy one. Then you find out that installing the software from the CD included gets you about 50-75% percent functionality. and introduces new things like TV-ON-Deman ALWAYS ON in DTV (HD OTA tuning with this card). There are problems with the encoding causing stuttering (100% unrelated to system hardware) there are issues with recording blah blah blah.

Did those people that bought these cards in 2004-2005 have every right to think and believe that spending $130-$150 on an HDTV Wonder that CLAIMED to do all the things on the box SHOULD in fact be able to do them? YOUR DARN TOOTING THEY DID!

At that time the HDTV Wonder and All of ATI's software encoded (vs hardware encoded) TV tuneing or All-In-Wonder cards were not compatible with Windows MCE 2005... In early 2005 ATI w/ Microsoft developed software drivers that would allow these products to work....A SELLING POINT THAT ATI NOW CLAIMED. ****HOWEVER, ATI FAILED TO MENTION that the HDTV wonder in MCE 2005 ONLY WORKED AS A DTV (HDTV OTA Antenna ...and the Analog tuner was NOT-FUNCTIONAL AT ALL!!!!) Further it required at first a compatible hardware encoded card....later this worked with the All-IN-Wonder cards as the analog tuner (even though they were still software encoded the driver improvements ATI & MS made made this possible).

NOW around that time the KRAM drivers and a hacked setup became available (0% support from ATI or MS) but these hacked KRAM drivers did in 2005 and still today allow the HDTV wonder to be used either as an analog tuner or an HDTV tuner (either one or the other not both at the same time) in MCE 2005. So finally enabling it to be used as a dual tuner analog set up.

So, don't be hating on people that bought these cards and gave up on them in 2004-2005. Many kept the cards and kept HOUNDING ATI TO FIX IT!!!! in forums like 3drage, hexus, the green button, avs forums, etc. are why your later 2005 to present installations were SO MUCH EASIER!

ATI made a lot of dramatic changes to its software and drivers and didn't explain or share or bother to get input from the people that buy there products and were there PAYING ALPHA & BETA testers. They changed the drivers from WDM-SP to WDM-NSP without explaining to the people the effects / issues.
And when in the Catalyst 6.3 Driver they went to a T200 Unified digital driver they presented it like it was an ORDINARY UPDATE...not telling people that it would stop the functioning of there MMC 9.08 and before systems.

ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, ATI, USER ERROR, BAD HARDWARE
8/10 times it was ATI's BAD DRIVERS software, and it's bad software installation in that it doesn't fully delete the files and more importantly the registry entries...so if you end up getting into a problem with digital vs analog drivers and NSP vs SP etc. you can't even count on ATI's add or remove programs to un-install itself to properly start over.

COME ON!

Report this as innapropriate

ATI HDTV WONDES

Strengths: Wonderful picture quality when you HDTV.

Weakness: Software Poor. Can not use Guide Plus + software to pre schedule HDTV recordings. Software downloaded from ATI doesnot work!

Have spend more than 5 days trying to get the HDTV and Guide Plus+ software to work. Finally found out from ATI techs. that it would not and the software was back at engineering being work on. Installed a lesser verison and that software doesn't work with Guide Plus+ and High Definition digital recorder. Have spent a whole week on their web sight and trying to get some one to help. Finally got some one that spent some time with me. If they get the software issue straighten out and the Guide Plus + isses with the HDTV ....this my turn out to be a good product, but I have spent endless hours and installed this program and uninstalled this program more than 10 times and it still does not work like I though it should.

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Problematic software

Strengths: Good TV reception.

Weakness: Problematic software.

It takes a long time to install. The audio capture device is not recognized. Upgrade to the new version downloaded from ati.com is a mess. Unless you need, don't do the upgrade. This is the 3rd card I have from ATI. The software really has big issues.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Easy to install and comes with antenna

Weakness: No picture but could be due to distance from tower

I installed this into a Media Center PC and I downloaded the newest drivers from the web. It installed perfectly and effortlessly. But I am not getting a picture. Could be due to the fact of distance from tower but I will try an outdoor antenna and see if that helps. Otherwise I have heard that it displays a wonderful picture and works great.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Could not get it to work with my ati 9800pro.

Weakness: Poor software and compatability problems. It won't work with their own cards.

I tried for 2 weeks to get the HDTV Wonder to work in my system. I could only get it to partially work and it would consistantly crash and cause artifacts in the windows XP desktop. They need to recall these useless cards. I'm tossing mine in the garbage and will never buy ATI again.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Video worked.

Weakness: Stuttering audio, NO support for OS other than Windows XP.

First I must admit I purchased this card and did not notice it ONLY supports Windows XP. Silly me to expect the card to support any other OS. My OS is Windows 2000. Why can't they support Windows 2000?!! Media Center XP has not exactly received glowing reviews. I refuse to go through all the licensing and registration BS for Windows XP, let alone shell out another $200. Naturally I learned this after registering my ATI product (that process logs WAY too much personsal information) and making a toll call to technical support in Canada that had me waiting because of heavy call volume. I purchased this card because I saw a good review in PCMagazine. Wish I had read reviews through PriceGrabber. Save your money and buy a card from someone other than ATI.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Great picture

Weakness: Difficult to install and debug. Records wrong channel when channels go in sequence; 20-1, 20-2, 20-3. Audio stutters when TV-ON-DEMAND is enabled.

ATI's support is getting better. You can now create tracking numbers and support emails you when a response has been added. But searching their site for an answer is despicable. Support responses will direct you to an answer (not the right one, of course) that you could never find by browsing their site. Over the air HDTV drops signal at times. However, I have it running next to a Sony XBR HDTV which also drops the signal sometimes. But the two tuners lose signal at different times, which leads me to believe it is not the broadcaster. HDTV is a great idea, but without more standards it will always be problematic.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: A great idea

Weakness: the software sucks the manual sucks their tech support sucks

Do not buy this card unless you have a lot of time to waste.

It almost works, enough to tease you into thinking there is something goofy with your config. There isn't.

Check other message boards for more detail.

Problems include stuttering playback, inability to tune in certain channels consitently, software lockups/crashes, inability to delete the (massive) files it creates

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Good HDTV picture, when you can get it to work and stay working.

Weakness: Not a plug and play card, software that comes with it is worthless. Costomer service on web site is of no help. Sent e-mail of problems, no reply.

My computer is a AMD 2800+ XP proccesor, 512mb Ram, AGP ATI ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO video card, and replacing an ATI TV Wonder VE Pci card with the HDTV card. Installed the card and software that came with it, What a mess. After about two days of downloading new drivers, uninstalling and reinstalling in different combinations, did get it to work some what. Is allways recording to hard drive, no way to stop this. Can not delete or play back from video library. Have to use search files .vcr to delete or play them back. The card sounds good and looks good on paper, but if you don't have the time or patience, to get it to work, I would not spend the money. The card is not ready for the market, needs to still be in the testing phase.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Uhhh. Absolutely nothing yet.

Weakness: Where do I start?

I read reviews online about this before I boguth it some people got it to work some did not. I decided it would be no trouble installing because well, what could be so hard.
WHAT I DID:
1. Physically installed the card.
2. Turned on computer.
3. Used CD to install.
4. Tried to run, somthing like "errors have occured when opening DTV" or when opening TV:"errors have orrcured when opening TV"

You are able to run their vrappy diagnostiv test. At first it said i did not have DirectX9 which i did and now it says I dont even have a CD-ROM drive, its worthless.
I have gotten the files off the websitewhich did not help. I have reinstalled Windows on my C: partition. I have a 9800 Pro that I bought the same day (day after thanksgiving). I have wasted well over 15 hours getting this to work. I have sent ATI 3 emails because I dont want to pay 2.00$ a minute to sit on hold for an hour. They have not responded to any of them. I also have a 9600XT. I never had any problems with that. The 9800 Pro crashes when I do 3D mark or play any game for a few minutes. I have a disfunctional 9800 Pro and a disfunctional HDTV Wonder. I hooked my PS2 up to the hdtv wonder and the picture SUCKED BIG TIME. A whole loy better if it were on a 9 inch TV. It also lagged terribly. That was one time when I got the analog TV to work, which currently it does not.

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Terrible terrible terrible software

Strengths: none

Weakness: terrible software

There is very little for me to comment on this product b/c essentially it never worked b/c the software crashed so many times. First, the only way to install the software (ATI Media Center ) was so reinstall Windows! Yes, I know that a lot of people were lucky enough that the software installed easily but a LARGE number of people have to reinstall the OS just to get the ATI Media Center to even start. It's embarassing that ATI would even release such a pathetic attempt. Be aware you have to install 6 different applications in perfect order, with the perfect number of reboots to even have a prayer of this working.

I am a pretty advanced computer user and write software myself. I can have Windows / Linux dual booting in less than an hour from a blank harddrive...I've written device drivers...I've installed the hairest applications on Windows/Linux/AS400/etc servers and desktops. Nothing I'm saying is to impress (and it's nothing impressive anyway I know) but the point is - I'm not an idiot and trust me when I say this software is AWFUL.

After a clean install of the OS, I got everything up and running. Then I was treated to constant crashing and freezing. Did I mention I hate this thing. I returned it.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Very nice picture on the computer crt; now that I know what HDTV looks like, I will have to get an HD ready tv in the living room.

Weakness: Remote is not intuitive to use, especially pertaining to time slip and/or recording operations. Changing channels take up to 2-3 seconds sometimes.

Athlon XP 3200 CPU; ATI AIW 9800 Pro video card; my max CRT resolution 1280x1024; 1GB RAM; I'm using a rooftop antennae, not the one that came with the card (the one supplied would probably work in an urban area, but not if you live rural like me). Also using a mast mounted antennae amplifier from Radio Shack. Although I'm using the amplifier indoors, this boosted the signal indicator another 6-8%. I'm certain the boost will be greater once the amp is mounted correctly on the mast (waiting for the weather to warm up). Adding the amp removed any frame freeze that I had previously. I never had cable tv or satellite tv, so getting DTV from my existing rooftop antennae is great. I'm getting some of the channels I lost since we lost the broadcast from the World Trade Center.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Price. It works! Great picture quality

Weakness: Heavy disc activities (to cache current program so you can rewind). Troublesome SW installation

This is a great product for its price.

Image quality is excellent. After buying it, I have not used my 20TV for a long time

It also comes with video input so you can do video capture.

The two downsides are:
1. SW installation is troublesome, I needed to lookup forum, download new packages from ATI site etc.

2. If you need to do other HD intentive applications, it may cause HDTV wonder to lose some frames or halt temporarily.

But overall, I love this product!

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wow!

Strengths: na

Weakness: ya

cant believe a company is selling this crap. the software does not work with the hardware. (i cant say that without laughing) i returned this faster than i have ever returned anything in my life.

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Incompatible card with software horrors

Strengths: It has not destroyed any of the other hardware in my computer.

Weakness: It has not worked correctly with other TV software I have. No linux support. Thus the only software is the stuff that came with it. It is the worst software I have ever used.

I have many regrets for having bought this particular card. Part of it is my fault, I should have been more careful looking for Linux support. This is the second TV card I have used and it does work better than the first one, but I had to get rid of it as the manufacturer promised it was fatally broken (as a product line). Having friends who worked at ATI in the TV department, they explained the history behind their gudawful software, and it is a result of careless product development and outsourcing on their part. I am turning away from all ATI products, including 3D accelerators as those made my computer crash too.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Looks great even though my cable line is week.

Weakness: With downloaded drivers the tv guide doesn't fully work. Or maybe it is just me.

Getting a signal in my area is a challenge especially when cell phones don't work in my home. Great card only hogs my CPU on load up then I can play massive multiplayer online games while recording a show. 3.4pentium D, 2gb ram, ati crossfire x1900xt

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ATI HDTV Wonder - Great buy

Strengths: Quick install, includes HDTV Antenna, Includes remote, and easy DVR functions

Weakness: Can only receive broadcast HDTV signals, Must install software in certain order.

I wantd a card to watch TV with, and with this card I got much more than that. Installation was pretty straight-forward, install the card, then drivers, then media center, then remote wonder software. ATI Customer support was a snap to get a hold of, and were VERY helpfull in replacing my missing video input adapter. It has the simplest DVR functions I've ever seen, and very nice Guide integration. It does use a bit of processor - 60%-70%, but when I'm watching TV, I'm usualy not doing anything else. The only thing I could have asked for more, was a dual tuner... That's when DVR's really shine through.

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Great Hardware......terrible installation!!!!!

Strengths: Great Picture quality....and it's HDTV!!!!

Weakness: The worst installation that I have ever experienced!!!

After spending HOURS trying to get the card to work and multiple calls with ATI support, I finally got this thing to work. Although, the box doesn't say it....you NEED to have an existing ANALOG TV tuner card in the system first for WMCE 2005 to recognize the HDTV card.

So...to save yourself hours of frustration, while your buying the ATI HDTV wonder for your MCE2005, add another Analog TV tuner to the shopping cart.

In other words....this isn't a stand alone product at all! I would have given it an "Excellent" rating...but after spending HOURS to get this thing running.....I'll leave it at "POOR".

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ATI always has good products.

Strengths: Easy installation, great tv picture.

Weakness: It doesn't work with cable HDTV. CPU usage is a little higher.

I am very strange why some people have many problems during the installation. As for me, it is just a piece of cake. Maybe it is because I have a ATI 9200 AGP card, which shoud be compatiable with this ATI HDTV card.
This card comes with an HDTV antenna. It can save you some money. The antenna works OK, since I can receive all the siginals nearby. Well, sometimes I need to change the direction of antenna.
If you are customed to HDTV, you will never want to return back to normal TV. The HDTV world is really wonderful. ATI always produces good cards, and this is one of the best.
I love this card.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Good video. Supports broad range of multimedia objects.

Weakness: Poor installation process. Manual install used to keep software up-to-date. Very poor customer support.

The first time I tried to install the software, it crashed my system. I had a brand new Dell 8400 without any additional boards. I rebooted in safe mode and finally got the software loaded. But nothing worked. I loaded their latest drivers and finally got the HDTV to work, but regular TV would not (separate antenna input and software). ATI Support was terrible. About a month later, they released a revised viewer. I loaded and still didn't work. I read thru the Knowledge Base and found a small article on requiring a manual modification to a path statement to get it to work. Works fine now. But interface to the tuner software (ATIMM) is not straightforward. No usability analysts were employed.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Easy to install. No problems at all.

Weakness: Running on a Dell 2.4Ghz P4 with 512mb of rdram. Watching TV eats up system resources enough that I can't do other things on the computer without disturbing picture.

Every channel works great, except for ABC, where I can only get audio, with no video. I still haven't messed with how to convert recordings to avi or mpeg format, if that is possible. I have a Sony 36" XBR downstairs to watch OTA HDTV, but I enjoy having this card with PC to watch it in my bedroom. Not a bad item, but I wish it didn't eat up so many system recourses.

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ATI HDTV Wonder Video Card

Strengths: Great HDTV quality

Weakness: Need to find a place where you get a strong signal and it may not be near your computer.

Overall if you get the latest drivers from the internet and you live in an area where you can get a strong signal. Then I suggest that you buy this. I had to move around a lot to get a strong signal. If your still unsure I suggest you wait until next year when HDTV will be booming like crazy.

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