Customer Reviews

ATI 100-715331 TV Wonder 650 PCI Interface High Definition Personal Video Recorder for PC

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This ATI hd tv tuner is the cheapest way to watch hdtv right now. However, consumers will pay a price by troubleshooting their hd tuner to work. I have a fancy dual core computer with a high end graphics card (ATI 1800x).

Don't bother installing the drivers that come with the tuner because they are garbage. Go directly to the ati website and download the newest drivers because they are much better.

Firstly, the hd signal looks amazingly crisp when the signal comes in. Unfortunately, I find that I have to change the direction of my antenna for certain channels and it can take many minutes to get the signal perfect because it is very sensitive.

One very nice aspect about the hd software that comes with it is it lets you record in full native hd quality and you can keep these files for as long as youd like. Unfortunately, the software doesn't let you edit which part of the recording you would like to keep. The only way to edit what you want is to turn on and off the tv tuner in symphony with what you want to record.

The software constantly records what you watch so you can pause and rewind so this can fill up your hard drive quickly. It would be nice to be able to edit out what you don't want to record easier while maintaining the full quality of the video.

Another problem with the current software is it has very misleading indicators as to how big the recorded files are when you export them. They are completely unreliable.

I use my hd tuner for only a few shows every week but I thoroughly enjoy using it. However, it takes a lot of effort to get it to work optimally. If you don't mind the hassle, this is a great chance for you to get hdtv on your computer.

I live in Hollywood California where the reception is supposed to be very good.

I gave this 4 stars because of the driver issues that I had (though I'm not entirely convinced I can blame this card). I would give it 4.5 stars if that were possible. Like I've said, I did have some driver issues. They manifested as frequent reboots, system lockups and video stutter. However, after I got it setup right all of these problems went away.

A word of advice: Start by creating a restore point of your system if you've already got your system working correctly with other cards (digital or analog). This will help you out in the long run if you need to restore and start again.

My system is now working with the drivers that came on the included CD, so updates may not really be needed (though they are highly recommended).

I'm only using the digital tuner portion of this card along with 3 analog tuners. My HD channels come in as good as my antenna allows (though the HD tuner on my TV is slightly stronger). I've noticed that I usually get only one red bar in the signal strength bar in MCE even on the channels that come in perfectly. ATI support was not able to tell me why this is. Since I continue to receive the channels clearly despite this indication, I'm not too worried about it.

So here is my breakdown:

PROS:

* Very good picture quality (the Theater 650 chip is really nice)

* Receive the same number of channels as my HDTV's built in tuner (so it's not a weak tuner like some have reported on other products)

* Free over the phone tech support

* Redesigned support site makes locating driver updates much easier than before.

CONS:

* Initial driver woes...I never did figure out why it didn't work right the first two times. Tried new drivers. Eventually got it working with included drivers.

* Signal strength in MCE is not accurate (I get a better signal with the card than what is indicated in MCE). I'm not sure if this is a CON for the card or for MCE.

* High-end graphics card needed

* Patients needed. Everything else in my system worked right the first time in. I had to fiddle with this card to get it right.

WOULD BE NICE IF

* it were dual digital rather than 1 digital + 1 analog

* it allowed simultaneous use of both the analog and digital tuners (haven't tried this yet, so who knows?)

I'm still going through my "burn-in" period since I've gotten things setup right. So I'm recording my shows both in HD and SD while I continue to test this card (and until I get a stronger antenna). So far, so good.

HD looks gorgeous. I pick up 3 or 4 channels in the cambridge area. No problems with regular cable TV input either. Works very well with windows media center

I picked this card up knowing that a lot of people have had trouble with them. My system is an older 1.75 gHz AMD Sempron, and I had an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 as the video card. Well, the installation went smoothly, but I installed the drivers from the ATI website since they were newer than what was on the CD. After installation, I scanned the channels and could only watch analog cable and standard-definition digital channels. Just to ensure that it was working, I set it to one of the high definition digital channels (but could only see black and hear audio) and I captured that video to the hard drive. I played it back and it was very jerky, but it worked!

That meant that my older Radeon was the problem, so I upgraded my video card. I researched until I found a card with as many high definition acceleration features as possible, and bought it. Since I have a slower processor, I knew that I had to make the graphics card do as much work as possible. With the Geforce 7800 GS installed, this tuner works beautifully!! HD over the air looks fantastic. It captures without any trouble, and I can play back full resolution high definition content perfectly.

If you have trouble with it, get the latest driver's from ATI and make sure that your main graphics card is up to par. You need either NVidia PureVideo or ATI Avivo technology.

This card worked well with Windows Vista and was easy to install and set up, but my 2-year old Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II (23xxx) dual tuner has a much better picture. I noticed the difference immediately. I could see halos around gradient objects and artifacts that are not there with my Hauppauage card. Installed the Hauppauge card back in and the video was clearly superior.

Also, this card will only get HD when using an external over the air HD antenna hooked up to it. I do not believe you could use this through an HD cable box to record HD TV, which is what I originally thought.

ATI has pulled this card from store shelves. I don't know why Amazon still offers it, but you can't find it elsewhere. A new revision fixing some buggy hardware will be released in mid October.

This is a great tuner, but I'd wait for the revision ;)

The card works and produces a reasonable image, but the "Catalyst" software used to drive the card is lacking/buggy. To make work, I had to disable the SCSI CD burner in the system (or the software would hang for several minutes before working). The sofware is slow to open/respond, beyond that the ability to size the TV window is very limited. This card replaced a standard TV card in my system that I bought for $25. I used the old card more because it would open quickly and I could resize the window to be small (non intrusive) while I was working on other things. On the plus size, I can expand the HDTV card to larger windows while retaining a good image.

This is another great product from ATI. We previously had the Theater 550 Pro. The tuner in the 650 is far superior. There is no reception problems tuning stations. The included antenna will even pick up radio signals that are 80 miles away. If you are wanting HDTV reception be sure to get a good size exterior antenna for proper reception. The antenna included with the card will only pick up very strong HDTV stations if you live in the city where the station broadcasts. You may need a signal booster if you are far away from local brodcast stations like me.

The picture quality with this card is great. It does a very good job encoding analog cable TV. However, with Windows Media Center in Vista, the card cannot be configured for both analog cable and OTA HDTV. Supposedly, a Microsoft hotfix should resolve this issue but it didn't work for me. A Hauppage WinTV-HVR-1600 works fine for both analog cable and OTA HDTV, but it's analog picture quality is not as good.

I used this card to for my Beyond TV 4.6 program that I am running on my PC.

I am running Digital Cable and it is running great with that. If you are thinking about getting one, make the jump and do it!