Great rich colors and tons of features!
Written: Aug 09 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fabulous colors, great features and flexibility with settings. Tuner and VCR are very handy.
Cons: A bit pricey. File player has glitch described below.
The Bottom Line: Rich colors and tons of features make this card a must have. It would be a video editor's dream with all its connections.
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| luckydriver's Full Review: ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON, (32 MB) PCI Video Card |
I've been using the card for about 4 months. As soon as I installed it I saw the difference in many of the games I play. For example the grass and other objects in Links were much sharper and the colors deeper. The ability to record TV programs on my hard drive is a wonderful feature. It prevents you from missing things if there are 3 things on at the same time. But be forewarned, the video takes up a lot of hard drive space. 1 hour at only 'good' quality can take 2gigs. However the settings are very flexible and you can set up your own 'quality' to adjust for limited hard drive space. Also you can use the cables supplied to move any video to a regular VCR, thus, freeing up your drive. If you tv is close enough, you can also plug in your tv and watch right from the computer without doing any transferring.
The guide plus service is free and is nice. The descriptions of shows isn't always that good, but hey, it's free and I've found the listings to be accurate. I have not tried the 'time shifting' aspect of the card. You are supposed to be able to set it up just like a VCR to record when you are away. I have always been home and started recording manually. It is also possible to take home movies and put them on your drive. I recommend this for people with very large drives who have precious memories that they don't want to chance storing on video tape, which will eventually deteriorate.
My one minor complaint is about the file player. The web site has addressed the problem but I don't like it. You can't have your files in a 'root' or 1st level ( I forget what it's called) folder. In other words, instead of keeping my files in 'my documents', I have to create a sub folder I call ATI, then save the files there. If you try to launch a file from a first directory, you will get an error. I tried an updated file but still haven't been able to fix the problem.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 250
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Epinions.com ID:
luckydriver
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Member: Todd
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 0 members
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