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."

Comments

The problem with external TV tuners...

[francismacomber]

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.

Re:The problem with external TV tuners...

[Hank Chinaski]

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.

Re:The problem with external TV tuners...

[Curtman]

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?

Re:The problem with external TV tuners...

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

USB 2 can give good video

[SalsaDot]

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 :)

Drivers

[robpoe]

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.

There are more

[Teun]

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...

Re:Mac/Linux?

[Mr.G5]

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.

Re:Why the hell is it a "daughter board"?

[donscarletti]

I understand the continuation of the "motherboard" concept here, but daughter board makes absolutely no sense in my mind. Sure, the child analogy fits, but the "daughter" board has a PCI connector that is INSERTED into the motherboard. In every other application I have EVER seen this is referred to as a "male" connector (a female being a receiver connector into which the male is inserted).

It should be called an oedipus board. Because it is a child that inserts its male connector into its motherboard.

That was possibly the worst thing I have ever posted.