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ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 Reviewed
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."
Agreed. I mean.. look at this quote:
prefer an outboard piece of equipment instead of cracking open their case and dropping in a daughter board.
Ok, exactly _how_ hard is it to open your case. Compared to all the trouble involved in getting new devices to work, setup programs etc. A really bad argument. I guess there might be a percentage or two of the population that cannot, and have noone to help them "cracking open their case...", but are those people likely to buy a TV-tuner anyway ? I have a BT878, just as the parent, and it works great.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Well, you forget all the notebook users. They just "crack open their case" when it falls from the starbucks cafe table on the marble floor.
So for them external tv is nice of course.
IAAL
I've got an AverMedia USB 2 external tv tuner. Its nicely made and does deliver good video over USB2 HOWEVER I'm disappointed with the fact that:
:)
- it uses the PC sound card for the audio
meaning more cables, a little clipping as
my laptop only has a mic level input and less
than perfect sync. All that USB2 bandwidth and
they dont use it for the audio???
- All the PVR software I've tried (apart than
the buggy software that comes with it) is unable
to control the tuner, though if the card is
alredy set to a channel it feeds the other PVRs
OK.
I wanted to setup a TV server for a short while. I ended up connecting the AverMedia to a VCR to guarantee the channel would not lost when the PC rebooted (VERY likely with Windows Media Encoder
A percentage or two?! There are LOADS more than that who don't even know what "right-click" means, let alone how to open their computer and install a card. Most people think it's some horrible complicated process that they need to pay the people at CompUSA $50 to do.
So, the review shows screen shots. I think there should be a sentence at the end of EVERY review for us Linux users -
"This device DOES/DOES NOT have drivers for Linux available/in the package/on the website".
That way - we dont have to hunt it down, and we know right away which companies to support.
= Grow a brain...
The real market for these is in laptops... as in if your staying in a crappy motel(for a convention or something) that doesn't have a TV this would be great. or for the old game-system-in-the-car routine.
I'm sorry, the quality of that review was appalling. Why on earth does the author suggest connecting it to a receiver box, when the whole point is to allow TV on the go? What sort of person carries a receiver unit to their hotel? This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the TV Wonder is actually a receiver unit anyway.
And again, he criticises the quality of using co-ax cabling to get the TV signal to the box. Does he have any better suggestions? Wireless? ESP, perhaps. I think this reviewer needs to think very hard about what this unit was actually designed to do, before leaping in and criticising it. I didn't even bother to read the rest of the review - if he doesn't know what he's talking about in the first half, he won't in the second, either.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
I have a couple of machines, and while opening up the case and installing a PCI card is rather trivial, I don't want to buy cards for every single machine, nor do I want to open two cases and switch a card everytime I want to do some video work on a different machine than where the card currently is.
The one machine household is becoming a rarity these days.
I saw something quite remarkable the other day.
A set of jump leads for a car.
Nothing special there you might think, but these were jump leads from cig lighter to cig lighter.
The claimed benefits included not having to get under the hood, and not getting dirty.
Thinking outside the box is not always a bad idea, I can think of many many people who wouldn't know what the battery in their car even looked like. Sure this isn't for everyone, and purists would shudder at the thought, but its a product that has a market.
With usb2, and firewire as standards for moving video data around, why should we worry about having to risk damaging the computer by opening it up?
One other aspect to it, how can I crack open my computer and put in a tv card if I bought a tiny silent desktop, or a laptop computer that has no room for expansion?
Using usb/firewire is much more expansive and practical than your closed view.
I'm pleased your internal card works and your happy with it, but just because your happy/comfortable/able to install the card internally doesn't mean everyone else is.
liqbase
Yeah, but those cigarette lighter jump leads aren't all that good. The starter motor of a car takes the largest current of all components within the vehicle, so much so that the usual path of cable in a car goes:
:)
Battery -> Starter motor & solenoid -> everything else.
The cigarette lighters take very, very little current in comparison (you can power one from your PC's power pack! ) and the circuitry leading to them is normally only of the guage required.
It is therefore very easy to burn out a chunk of your car's wiring loom or a fuse by using these dodgy jump leads.
Also think about it, who's going to know the correct procedure for jump-starting a car but not know where the battery is?
The idea is there and it's good to think outside the box, but sometimes the box is there for a reason so it may be a safe idea not to stray too far outside the box
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
um, NEXT! But seriously, if this isn't USB powered, then it is absolutely no good for a notebook traveler. I can see wanting to catch some local tv while out of pocket, but to carry around this, an antenna, and a wall wart. Too much kit. I know Hauppauge has a USB one that is USB powered. Even if the quality is just ok, it would be a better solution.