OK for TV, bad for recording
Written: Dec 14 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ok for watching TV, preview panels good
Cons: bad for recording video
The Bottom Line: For basic TV watching,get the ATI TV Wonder VE - it is much cheaper (about $45). For recording, get a hardware compression device, such as Pinnacle.
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| chinnook's Full Review: ATI TV Wonder |
Had problems right out of the box. The video card configuration does not match the documentation - instead of the S-video connector on the card, it is now on a cable with the A/V jacks. CD was for Windows 95/98 only - not XP. Downloaded the lasted driver from ATI. After spending 4 hours installing the driver (instructions were terrible), the TV provided only horizontal lines. Looks like a horizontal sync problem. After registering online (they will not provide support until your register), I called ATI. After waiting 20 minutes for ATI support (on my nickel), I was told to get the latest nVidia driver. Alternately, I could hold down the Ctrl key while selecting the TV key. Note: the card is supposed to be fully compatible with nVidia. However, they acknowledged that they have been having problems with the nVidia GEForce display cards. Holding down the Ctrl key worked, until I tried recording - then the horizontal lines appeared again. And I can't restart the TV without turning off the recorder. This means I can't watch and record at the same time. After downloading the latest nVidia driver, it still had the same problem. Another call to ATI - they now say try the beta version of the ATI driver - it MAY work. I've downloaded the driver but have decided to return the card. During the rare instances when I can get the recorder to work, during playback, there are may lost frames. Averaging 10 to 30% lost frames - even when recording on the lowest resolution setting. Although this only provided a jerky picture on the PC, when I transfered it to DVD, it was unusable. The audio and video was out of sync - by the 10-30% loss in video. I'm running on a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 with 256M memory. By the way, ATI acknowledged that there will be some lost video.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 71.00
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Epinions.com ID:
chinnook
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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