TV Wonder PCI finally works with XP, GeForce and Audigy!
Written: Sep 27 '02 (Updated Jul 26 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: TV on PC, record video, video snapshots. New Drivers fixed incompatibility problems(April 10/03)
Cons: Finicky drivers (resolved), GeForce incompatibility (resolved), XP unfriendly (resolved), Soundblaster Audigy unfriendly (resolved).
The Bottom Line: I now recommend this card if you are running XP. Audigy. And or a GeForce Card.
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| glim's Full Review: ATI TV Wonder |
Here I sit so broken hearted, paid a dime and only.. oh wait, this is a hardware review -
**ATI has since fixed all problems, if you want to skip my rants head to bottom**
Like many people I bought the ATI TV Wonder PCI due to the overwhelming availability, decent specs, and nice packaging of the card. I have used an ATI all-in-wonder product before, but had to eventually give it up due to underwhelming 3d performance.
One year ago - I bought a GeForce2mx 32mb card; 6 months ago I bought an ATI TV Wonder card. Both cards worked great under my Win 98 OS, I was happy.
Five months ago - I bought Windows XP Professional, things stopped being so great. TV tuner card anomalies - When I start the TV window it had horizontal lines through the picture unless I held down the CTRL key when launching the tv window and I could not record any video at all due to this shortfall.
Three months ago - I bought a SoundBlaster Audigy, the final straw. I could no longer control the audio through the TV window and could not record any sound to go along with the no picture.
The ATI web site says it's my video card driver, it needs to be updated. I update my driver every week to no avail - could it be that ATI is getting back at it's rival NVIDIA by not offering any support? Could that actually boost sales of this card or make us think better towards ATI?
I believe even Microsoft is poking fun at poor old ATI by offering the wrong TV tuner driver on it’s "windows update" site (that issue has since been corrected.)
If you are running XP and or SB Audigy - you might want to look at http://www.gocyberlink.com/ for their PowerVCRII to accompany the ATI card. This so far is the only solution I have found to this troubled piece of "hardware".
*Update* September 27th/02
I am still trying to get this card working properly. The ATI site is offering beta drivers which I am currently trying. They ask you to go into your system properties and manually change each ATI driver reference to a newer driver - I have never seen such awful driver problems or install methods from a large manufacturer before.
**April 10/03**
Current Hardware: Geforce4 4800SE, SB Augigy2.
Found new drivers on the ATI Site, Mediacenter version 7.9(apr 10/03). The three sets of drivers it has you install- install automatically (unlike previous installs.)
Audigy1&2 audio is now controlled through the ATI player! (in the auto setup wizard, select any audio input and click OK, it will then bring up a selection with "line-in" on it)
Video with GeForce cards displays properly every time!, it is finally working as designed! Yaay!
I am now upgrading this card to "I recommend this to a friend" and I give it four stars instead of two.
Thank you ATI! It took a couple years, but you did it!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 75
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Epinions.com ID:
glim
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Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 0 members
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