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ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 Reviewed

Posted by michael on from the boob-tube dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ViperLair reviews the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0, a sort of low-rent option for those you want to add a TV tuner or video-in to their machines, but would prefer an outboard piece of equipment instead of cracking open their case and dropping in a daughter board."

16 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. The problem with external TV tuners... by francismacomber · · Score: 5, Informative

    My roommates constantly want to borrow it. I was so much happier with my BT878 internal card.

    Sometimes portability isn't such a good thing.

    1. Re:The problem with external TV tuners... by Curtman · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm curious about the picture quality of this thing. I own a Hauppauge WinTV, and two ATI All In Wonder cards, and I have to say the AIW cards blow the Hauppauge out of the water when it comes to picture quality. The Hauppauge has a pretty grainy picture, and when CPU usage is high, it drops frames big time.

      Of course being a Linux user, my primary concern is driver support. On that front, the Hauppauge wins easily. The driver is part of the standard Linux kernel, and capture support is fantastic. In order to watch TV on the All In Wonder I have to compile my X server with Gatos which takes about 3 hours to do, and there is sometimes quite a bit of lag between a XFree/Xorg release, and support from Gatos. I've never been able to capture video with it, but I'm not really interested in doing that, so I'll blame myself for that. Others seem to be doing it just fine. There is some pretty exciting talk about merging Gatos into Xorg on the mailing list, and I'm hoping all goes well with that effort.

      I'll admit to not having read TFA, but I searched it for Linux, and didn't find it mentioned. Anyone have one of these things, and is it useable?

    2. Re:The problem with external TV tuners... by PhotoGuy · · Score: 4, Informative
      There are differences between Hauppage cards, too. The PVR-250/350 line have hardware encoding, very high quality. There are two different versions of their USB product, one spits out direct MPEG, and I suspect is better than the one that doesn't (I had the latter, and it was disappointing.)

      After being a MythTV user for a year or so, I'm amazed this type of thing isn't pretty much ubiquitous among Linux geeks such as muchself.

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
    3. Re:The problem with external TV tuners... by Curtman · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hi self. :)

      Word just came in on the Gatos mailing list that Vladimir has been given CVS write access to Xorg! This should mean that some day soon, we should see TV tuner and capture support for ATI All In Wonder cards being part of the standard Xorg distribution. Congratulations to everyone working on the project.

  2. There are more by Teun · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is what I bought 3 weeks ago:
    Pinnacle PCTV USB2.0

    and am very happy with.
    Very small (pack of sgarettes)
    Powered through the USB port
    Comes with a remote
    Sensitive antenna input
    Important for the traveller it will do PAL, NTSC, SECAM.
    Good software

    But so far no luck on Linux...

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  3. Re:A good TV-card under Linux by soccerisgod · · Score: 4, Informative

    Important question: Where do you live? Does the area have any kind of digital tv? If so, I'd go for a dvb solution - eliminates the need of encoding your recording, just gotta grab the mpeg stream and save it on the harddisk.

    To see what cards are supported in general (analog and digital), a visit to Gerd Knorr's website bytesex.org might be in order...

    I personally have two Hauppauge cards, one for normal analog cable and one for DVB-t. The windows drivers are a joke, but they work well in linux...

    --
    If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
  4. Re:Mac/Linux? by Mr.G5 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You sould look at the Elgato EyeTV, it has a FireWire interface and a hardware-based MPEG2 encoder so it doesn't bog down your processor. The best thing is that the software is written exclusively for the Mac so it doesn't have that ported-at-the-last-second feel to it.

  5. Re:USB 2 can give good video by Norgus · · Score: 2, Informative

    I had an internal avermedia card (which worked okay under linux) but it was an utter whore under windows. Caused alot of instability and the software was shit. Moral of the story: never buy Avermedia.

  6. These guys opinion went right in the toilet by ChadAmberg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Once they started the "monster cable is worth it" crap. While using something like 12 over 24 guage cable might make a difference, these guys are on serious crack if they think 40$ cable is better than 10$.
    They must have that psychological problem of paying more so they think it works better issue, even though independent tests show no difference.
    I think I'll want to sell them the 200$ penis enlarger instead of the 15$ one...

  7. Re:Why the hell is it a "daughter board"? by Tim+Browse · · Score: 2, Informative

    Daughter board has been used to describe a board you plug into the main board for a long time. I first heard it about 20 years ago.

  8. Re:different cables by BluhDeBluh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just so happens I'm a bit thick, spend too much time on forums, put the wrong link in and messed up the last reply... so fixing it here. Sorry people! It's early here!

    It's not to do with bandwidth. It's more to do with the fact that within the cable the image can bleed (it's analogue, not digital remember). S-Video removes this by giving the major elements of a formable image their own cable each. RGB is technically better by splitting the image into only the parts you can see, but the US don't have a format for that.

    This article might intrest you re: RGB, S-Video, Composite, Component differences.

  9. Re:Poor review. No hardware encoding is a feature? by Captain+Zion · · Score: 2, Informative

    And when he says that "component video (...) separates the video across red, green and blue" he probably meant YCrCb luminance-chrominance signals (unless the device has a SCART interface as well, which doesn't seem to be the case).

  10. Incomplete review by Faeton · · Score: 2, Informative
    So where's the part about the tuner aspect of the device? I mean, this IS a TV tuner right? Instead, he reviews it as a video-input device.

    He doesn't touch upon how good it grabs crappy signal from cable TV, nor how fast the channels change. He doesn't even review the TiVO-esque function.

    I think this is a 1/2 ass review that totally misses the point of having this device, which is being able to use your computer like a normal TV, which includes flipping through the channels. Just lazy!

  11. Re:So hard... by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Informative
    Well you are ass u meing that everyone has a good old PC box that that has pleanty of free spots to put cards in, and that you will only be using that box as your primary PC. These are the issues where it can be hard impossible, or unethical.

    1. Laptops: Yea thats right most laptops dont have much room to add stuff mabey 1 or 2 PMICA Slots which can be easily filled with a wireless card.
    2. Small form factor PC: Those small PCs that dont have free Slots to pug in.
    3. Your PC Is full: Some people just have all their slots full. It will become a hassle swaping cards for every allication you use.
    4. No primary PC: Lets say a kid who has seporated parents with slit costady. Half the time they are at one parrent and the other half there are at the other. So a USB2 can be easily moved from one location to an other.
    5. Not allowed to open up the computer: Say at work or at school or with people who actually dread seeing their computer open (You probably have seen them)

    So there are issues where a PCI / AGP card become much harder to add.
    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  12. Re:closed captioning support by grondu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Will it record closed captions and play them back when video is played back? Are other tv tuner hardware & software combos able to do this?

    The Hauppauge PVR-250 and PVR-350 cards can do this, at least under Windows. It requires a few registry changes and recent versions of the drivers and WinTV2000. For details, see here.

    --

    I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist

  13. Re:try Formac if you have a Mac by Whumpsnatz · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, granted it's $300, but the Formac Studio TVR is firewire. It's for Mac OS X only, though, so those without Macs are out of luck.