Rave

ATI's All-In-Wonder brand has been a top of the line TV for PC's for as long as the technology has been available.
It' is staggeringly effective at minimizing the usual headaches associated with massively multimultimedia-intensive operations on PC's.

Drivers

The magic, of course, is in the wildly complex and dense sent of microprocessors on this AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) video board. Without going into too much detail on that, the features they deliver are reflected in the suite of hardware drivers that Windows loads when the card is installed.
- Rage Theater Audio and Video
- MVD and PCD CoDecs
- TV Audio Crossbar
- TV Tuner

In addition to these, under the Display Drivers, you'll notice that it installs two named "All-in-Wonder", with one marked as "Secondary". This is because you can use a television as a secondary monitor.

Since this particular version of the All-in-Winder is not the latest greatest one, the CD in the box does not have the latest and greatest drivers.

One of the first things you'll want to do is go over to ATI's web site and download all of the necessary drivers and utilites. At a minimum, you'll need the "Catalyst" download, which has all of the hardware drivers. If you want to take advantage of the built-in Television, you'll need the MultiMedia Center (MMC) as well. If you download the MMC, you'll see that you also need to download and install some database drivers. Before you plug in the Remote Wonder remote control you'll also need to download the most current drivers for that device, too.

That's about as insane as the installation gets. There are a whole lot of other software utilities you can get for your All-in-Wonder, like if you have a DVD or VCR, but these cover the basics. When you're done, you can burn the newly created "ATI" directory onto a CD, delete it and it'll not be an issue again. Don't get rid of the OEM CD though. It contains things like DVD Player licensing and an excellent television guide.

Displays and Video Cards

Out of the box, the video card itself provides much - SurroundSound and Dolby and the abilitiy to play and record DVD's, CD's. It can also scan through television statiions - cable and antennae.

You can also program it's recorder to play or record television programs and video files - like having every videocasette in your library in the VCR at the same time.

If you have one of those futuristic space age HDTV (High Definition TeleVision) displays, or a digital monitor you can use the native DVI connector. If you have to use one of those old, stone-age CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitors, there's an adapter included in the box.

If you buy additional ATI cards, you can use a fature called "MultiView" to view two television programs at the same timme. If not, you can use a feature called ThruView to apply a transparency to the display so that you can work in your regular windows programs, while having the ghost of a program displaying on the monitor at the same time. This is an amazing feature, however my CPU temperature jumps about 3 degrees when I enable this feature. It doesn't degrade the performance of the PC however, because most of the resource-intensive operations are being performed by the microprocessors on the video card, not the computer itself.

Finally, you can plug just about any television into this thing - except standard coax cable. You can use Red/Yellow/White RCA cables, Sony SVideo, or SPDiF.

Audio

The card assumes that you have an audio card installed on your PC. Most PCs have one built into the motherboard (usually something from VIA). Something the documentation doesn't tell you is that there's a standard old-style CD audio connector on the card that can be plugged into the audio card's CD in connector on the card. This can keep you from having an unnecessary cable on the outside of the PC box. If you keep you're PC in a high-visibility area, this reduced clutter can make a difference.

One thing about the audio on this thing is that it's quality is limited only to the quality of your speakers and amplifiers, and of your audio card. Generally, you'd have to spend several thousand dollars on a sound system to get one that this card can't play to.

TV-on-Demand

One of the features on the TV card is the ability to pause live TV. If you're watching the last five minutes of a Red Sox game when Publisher's Clearing House knocks at your door, you can pause the play-back and finish watching the game after you send them away.

DRM - Digital Rights Management

This device makes great efforts to protect protected content. I was recording music off of PBS when an message box popped up telling me that the broadcast was protected, ending my recording session. Bummer, but cool.

Pinnacle Studio

For the video producer in you, the box contains a copy of Pinnacle Studio. If you install it, you have the option of installing about 1/4Gig of sample content showing what's possible with this program. This utility lets you put the professional touch on recorded videos, while cutting out the bloopers.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 250