It will decrease your work productivity, but its SO cool!!
Written: Dec 11 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: tv on your desktop, looks good, works good, stunning performance for the card, video capture/input/output
Cons: messes with desktop resolution in tv out mode(only temporary)
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| HydroPupy's Full Review: ATI ALL-IN-WONDER 128 Pro, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
Recently i purchased the ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro graphics from my local best buy store. I purchased this card because I have a DVD play on my computer, and really no desire to go out and buy a Component DVD player. The current video card i had along with the combination of a TV out card for the DVD was not compatible with Windows ME, so out it went, and in came the ATI All-in-Wonder, and wow......what a wonder it is.
After messing around with the card for about 10 minutes trying to get my display settings right, i finally had it. It runs very smoothly at high resolutions when in monitor mode. However the only disadvantage this card has, is that you cannot do TV output when you are running higher than 800x600 resolution on your monitor. This messes with your picture alignment on your monitor, but looks fine on the TV. It is kind of a hassle, but is still a nice feature when you want to watch full screen winamp visualizations or DVD's, or even mpeg movies.
When watching TV on your All-in-Wonder, all you have to do is plug your antena wire into the port on the card, and the software does the rest for you. You can change the size of the TV window to anything that you want, so you can type a paper while watching the current football game, or MTV. The controls are simple and use the keypad as a control. The software automatically scans for channels if you have cable, and will scan frequencys for HF waves if you have an antenna. You can also record programs into mpeg format and save them on your hard drive if you do not have a video tape handy.
Now is where the all-in-wonder starts to make you wonder if it cant do anything. It has a seperate set of ports for S-Video in, and component RCA inputs, so you can hook up your camcorder or VCR, or anything that has a RCA/S-Video out to it, and record to your hearts content. This comes in handy when you want to make home movies and edit them yourself for friends and family to see. The all in wonder comes with software for video editing, DVD watching, and music cd playing. It is all incorporated into an attractive looking side bar that can be set to appear when you run your mouse over it. In addition, the all in wonder pro comes with 2 games, and some other neat software to play with in your spare time. Games included were Heavy Gear 2, and Need For Speed High Stakes.
The in game graphics that this card produces are amazing. It cannot run quite as high of a framerate as the faster more game intensive cards, but it has increased the look of many games on my computer from my previous 32 meg Diamond Viper v770d card --(which had TNT2 capabiilty i might add).
Overall, the all-in-wonder 128 pro is a very good card, and has increased the stability, and useability of my system a great deal. I would reccommend it to any buyer on the market. Be careful not to get too carried away with it and forget to go to work. Its been known to happen. :)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
HydroPupy
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Member: Dusty Johnson
Location: Fort Collins, Colorado
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 5 members
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