TV Wonder: An Inexpensive, Enigmatic Niche Product
Written: Nov 27 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fills a need where there previously was none; good price
Cons: Nitpicky with system config. Memory hog.
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| jmtrumpet's Full Review: ATI TV Wonder |
When I owned an i486 system, I had purchased a Reveal TV-for-PC, at a significant cost. That card was worth hours of enjoyment. As time wore on the Reveal card did not work on any upgraded system. Time passed as it usually does, and the ATI TV-Wonder entered the market. The price seems right at a modest $79.
What purpose does a TV card really accomplish? What can a TV card do for you? It fills a niche. Deep down you know in your heart of hearts that you love television, and you wish that your television could come through your new love, the computer. That's a niche product.
Be careful when you buy the ATI TV-Wonder, however. The card is really meant for systems boasting a Pentium II or better, and does not work properly in Windows 2000 or ME. The best companion for the card is a graphics card that is AGP, one that supports overlay. Also beware if you own a "winmodem," which for me caused a very frustrating situation.
The problem was that for whatever reason, the TV wonder wouldn't load
properly at the system startup. It would only show "Video In" and a blue screen (the system would then usually freeze).
The temporary solution to this problem for me, was to go into the Device
Manager and remove the audio and video devices for the TV Wonder, then Refresh the list. The System then re-found the TV Wonder and the device worked correctly, showing the actual TV channels. As you can
surmise, it was a frustrating situation. I figured it was a problem with
my motherboard being slightly older than an ATI specification.
Recently, I purchased a different (faster) modem for my system, a 3Com 56K
Faxmodem. Originally in my system I had a Us Robotics Sportster Winmodem. After replacing my modem I figured I should try and see if the TV wonder would work without having to re-install the devices. It worked! No longer will I have to get into that Device Manager to use the TV Wonder!
To recap: My system is a FIC 503+ Motherboard, AMD k6-2 266 Processor,
128Mb Ram, ATI TV Wonder, ATI Rage Fury 128 (32MB w/video out), 3Com 56K Faxmodem, 48X CD-Rom, 2 Hard Drives, Creative-AWE64 Sound card.
When I had a US Robotics Sportster Winmodem in the system, the TV Card
only worked when I removed the TV Wonder devices and refreshed the list in the Device Manager *before using the modem for any purpose*.
I then changed out the modem to one that is not "Winmodem"-like. The TV
Wonder works as advertised.
Additionally, I have trouble sometimes with the closed captioning feature, it will function improperly causing a jumble of half-words and riff-raff. The solution I have found for that is to have the captions display in a seperate window. The video capture feature also is a memory hog, and is best on systems with several gigabytes available.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 79
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Epinions.com ID:
jmtrumpet
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Member: Jim Jeremiah
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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