Customer Reviews

ATI TV Wonder Elite PCI Remote Control Edition 100-703205

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

 

 

In a word, this card is "A-M-A-Z-I-N-G" .. The quality and performance is so good, it's hard to believe .. It unquestionably exceeds my highest expectations.

I did contact technical support to work through an initial installation glitch, but once I got to level II support, they quickly identified & solved the problem .. This was a minor inconvenience when compared to the incredible performance of this card .. Both the "fix" and additional checklist items from the support call are listed below as they may be useful to other users:

--THE FIX: If possible, arrange the PCI cards in the following order - video card in the 1st PCI slot, leave the 2nd slot empty, sound card in the 3rd slot, and the ATI TV Wonder Elite card in the 4th slot ....

--CHECKLIST ITEMS: Make sure the following components have the latest manufacturer versions of their respective drivers: DirectX, Video Card, Sound Card, and the computer chipset - particularly the AGP controller.

There are a couple of points about the ATI TV Wonder Elite that I feel have been missed in every other commentary I've read:

1. Tuner is superb
2. Recordings are stunning

On Comcast analog cable channels 2,4 and 7 are unwatchable on both my Panasonic VCR and Sony 32XBR100 TV. Channel 5 usually comes in acceptably, but not great. The ATI Elite tunes them all in perfectly.

Some reviewers have commented that the recordings look better than watching the live signal, and I agree with them. But burned to DVD they truly look like a manufactured DVD. They're as as good as Standard Definition NTSC 4:3 TV gets. I don't know yet if a direct S-Video feed from my Nvidia card looks as good, but I assume it does. I'll know as soon as I get hold of a 25-ft cable.

Been using this card for 3 months on a Windows MCE 2005 and it works like a champ. Look at reviews on other sites and it is clear that the encoder on this card is the best! A huge step above the WinTV-150 for media center. The picture is crystal clear. Well worth the extra money.

I am not using the enclosed software or the included remote as they are not needed for a MCE. I ended up selling the remote which fetchs about $20 on most auction sites. I am using an MCE remote which came with the machine.

I added this card to a Windows MCE 2005 machine that I built, and I'm very pleased with the results. Live TV and recordings are clear and sharp, radio playback is good, and the remote, which works through walls (I'm using it about 25 feet away), works fine with MCE 2005, and some of the buttons are customizable.

Installation was pretty easy...I didn't install the PowerCinema, since I'm using MCE 2005, but I didn't encouter any issues. Just make sure to get the latest software from ATI for the remote, and you should be all set.

The ATI TV Wonder Elite is simply the best card I've tried, and I've tried a few.

My only complaint is the bundled software is worthless. Install only the controllers needed for the remote off the CD, and get SnapStream's BeyondTV (google it) to use with the card. This combination is incredibly powerful -- ATI's got the best card, and SnapStream's got the best software for it. I look forward to a HD-capable card that can accept more than over-the-air signals.

Shows recorded with this card and burned to DVD (which can be done within BeyondTV) are professional quality.

Installed in an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ system under Windows XP Pro OS. TV tuner is great. The guide is great. S-Video input and audio inputs are great. FM tuner is great. Unable to get unit to display RCA video input. Tried two different VCR's. Since my main reason for buying this was to get high resolution recordings of my VHS library and copy to DVD's I was rather disappointed.

Unfortuntely while this item came new in the box it was defective and had to be returned to the seller who was very cooperative.

After using this on two seperate machines and having the same results, I would simply go without. Picture quality, features and ease of use are all good but the original software included on the install CD is a mess. It doesn't play well with Windows (XP or Vista) and downloading from the manufacturers website is a nitemare! They don't tell you what products you need to install/upgrade, they just give you a big list of software to download. There also appears to be some order to install them in to get them to work properly but they don't tell you what that order is. I had to watch the steps taken by the original install CD during installation and write down each program as it installed before I could get the updated software to work properly. Once I had the procedure, I had to uninstall the original, reboot and then install the downloaded updates in the same order the CD installed in, everything then seemed to work fine but I'm not sure it was worth the headache figuring it out. They may have updated the site since then but I'm not willing to install this again to find out.

watch out haupauge ATI is coming on fast and strong. Their TVwonder and all in wonder products are great products that produce clear pictures and record in great quality

The controls for changing channel, volume, date & time etc all require you to click up or down. There's no way to enter the desired value directly. For example, if the channel is set to 2 and you want 60, you have to click thru all 58 channels. This makes setting recording times very tedious.

If the included TV programming guide software is used to program a show to record, it wipes out all of the manually programmed times. Also, the guide sometimes fails to record the requested program.

The driver for the remote control crashes rending the remote non-function. This happens even when the remote is not in use.

After installing the TV card, I've found that sometimes the video will not come back on after the Windows power save turns it off. I ended up disabling power save. Also after installing, I began having problems with my computer shutting itself off.