ATI's HDTV Wonder - Bringing DTV to your PC
by Andrew Ku on June 22, 2004 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
HDTV Wonder - The Card
The card that we received was technically a non-qualified sample, but since we are testing function capability and features rather than performance, this really isn't an issue. Like the past TV Wonder products, there is no MPEG2 decoder on this card, which is one of the reasons why it can't be used with software like SageTV 2.0.
Click to enlarge.
ATI chose to use the Philips TUV1236D HDTV compliant tuner on their HDTV Wonder. Philips uses an ATI NXT2004 demodulator on all TUV1236D tuners, which serves to convert the DTV's 8VSB modulation transmissions to digital MPEG2 data. The NXT2004, as shown in the picture below, is actually on the back side of the tuner, and cannot be accessed without probably damaging the tuner. Note that the HDTV Wonder supports all ATSC supported DTV resolutions, not just the HDTV ones.
If you don't remember, sometime in the last half of 2002, ATI acquired the NextWave company as part of their move to get more into the multimedia arena, as NextWave was already producing demodulators.
Click to enlarge.
Since analog TV signals will still be around for some time, ATI has wisely decided to continue support for this standard. The HDTV wonder comes with one RF connector for DTV (the one on the right in the picture) and one for a cable/antenna hookup (left RF connector). Like the TV Wonder Pro, the HDTV Wonder supports audio/video in (composite and s-video) via their "love it or hate it" purple breakout box (included).
ATI already knows that you must be asking about a DTV All-in-Wonder possibility (as we were), and they have prepared a response in their HDTV Wonder's FAQ:
...One of the most obvious reasons involves size: the HDTV tuner solution is significantly larger than the current tuner on an All-in-Wonder board. Attempting to make such a large tuner fit on an All-in-Wonder board would result in sacrificing some of the All-in-Wonder's great feature set and performance. Another reason for separating the HDTV tuner from the graphics processor is to maintain signal integrity of the digital signal. Connecting the tuner to the demodulator is a sensitive matter that is easily impacted by electrical noise...Does this mean that with the full analog to DTV switch, All-in-Wonders will become extinct? Not likely; AIWs are still a good bread-and-butter source for ATI's multimedia team. With ATI's progression in their developments within the graphics and multimedia field, it is likely that both of these hurdles will be overcome in the future, and the full switch will be far from complete, which means that ATI still has quite a bit of time to figure things out.
Click to enlarge.
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enricong - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
How does this compare to the MyHD2I have this card too. but I'm dualbooting WinXP64 because they don't have 64 bit drivers. I figure ATI will be more likely to make 64bit drivers
bblake12 - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
Fact: There are several companies making HD Tuner Cards. One of the major cards out there is MyHDhttp://mcm.newark.com/NewarkWebCommerce/mcm/en_US/...
"In fact, the only major company that we are aware of making an HDTV tuner for PCs is Hauppauge, but the WinTV-HD hasn't sold in the same volumes for Hauppauge as their analog WinTV tuners. Add in the vacuum of HDTV supported multimedia software (MCE, Beyond TV, SageTV, Multimedia Center, Forceware Multimedia, etc...), and you get a recipe for a PC market not ready to embrace HDTV technology."
AndrewKu - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
#12 - 480i is the approximate quality of analog TV broadcasting. As for the tubes in some of your TVs, some do display the signal in a lower res, like 512x400. There should be several websites that have this in their information docs. Try "analog tv 480i" in google or something. So we are both kind of right… :)#13 - I think you make a good point, and this was something I was debating myself. My consideration was based on three other points: pricing, availability, and future software support. On the pricing issue, HDTV Wonder is at the cheapest pricing point I have heard of for a PC HDTV tuner. No other HDTV tuner can be bought or will be able to be bought at a retail store for the near future, at least according to our last talks with the stores a while back. And future software support is something that a company like ATI will have to do in order to keep their product in retail stores (i.e. EazyShare DTV). Hope that explains our line of thought a bit more.
joeld - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
My take on the card - it had better be darned good/stable/etc for me to pay 200 dollars on a non-hardware HDTV tuner card. I bought a DVICO FusionHDTV last year (or maybe before that) and it was only 140 bucks or so.mcveigh - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
this is too limited to have earned an editor's choice.Andrew check out what the people at avsforums thinkof the card and it's competitors.
joeld - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
I've only read to page four and I'm not too impressed with the article so far. It seems that a little more research should have been done or something before bringing the article to print. Hauppage isn't the only company bringing HDTV tuner cards to the market. I haven't been interested in HTPC's in a year at least, and I remember looking at products from MyHD and buying a tuner card from DVICO (their original FusionHDTV).I stopped reading this article after reading that analog signals are 640x480. It's been a while since I've researched this topic, but I know this is not true.
Kaido - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
AndrewKu - I'll have to give MMC 8.8 a try. EazyShare looks really cool...does it require a good video card to run the server? I have enough spare parts to build another box, I just need a motherboard and a cpu ($29 for a cheap mobo off newegg and about $50 for a 1.8ghz athlon). I don't want to blow another $100 or $200 for a video card for a server tho.Also, should I install the latest version of Catalyst, or should I install 3.x like in the MMC article?
AndrewKu - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
#2- It cannot function as the second device to support PiP/MultiView, but it should in a later release of MMC.#6 and 8 - You are sending a digital signal of a digital signal to your digital monitor. DVI output comes via your video card, not the HDTV Wonder as #7 mentioned.
#8 - If you are talking about PAL support, this is an NTSC version. As we understand it, this is for the North American market only. This isn't really for the gamer per say; this is just a nice way to get DTV into your home without having to pay the expensive cost of a HDTV. And yes, you can just plug in an antenna to the RF connector that is what I mentioned in the review. An antenna is not necessarily analog or digital; it is the signal that is categorized as such.
#9 - If you are having trouble with EazyShare, you might want to try looking at our MMC8.8 review. We worked out and tried to manipulate every single bug occurrence. In our experience, your system configuration should be stable with MMC and a TV Wonder Pro. Though, I am not sure what your specific issues are.
Kaido - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
I have an ATI TV Wonder Pro with Remote Control...the only thing good about it is the remote control, lol. The TV software was fairly buggy for me, plus the required specs aren't really true - I had a 1.4ghz Athlon, 1gb ram, and a radeon 9600xt, and it'd still skip while recording if I even opened Internet Explorer. That and I didn't care for the GUI.I hope ATI has a trade-up program for their TV tuners like they do their video cards...anyone know if they do? I may go with Hauppauge next tho...their USB2 TV tuner is looking pretty good.
justbrowzing - Tuesday, June 22, 2004 - link
A few pretty basic questions from France, where DTV lags the US:Reception: can you just plug in an antenna to the digital jack for capture?
Will it work in Europe, too?
Can you use a 9600se card & still get the noted benefits? This is an extremely expensive solution ($400 USD or 500 Euros) for us non-gamers, btw, though a tidy racket for ATI.
No DVI? So then you're sending an analog version of a digital signal to your digital-capable monitor?
You mention Hauppage's DTV tuner, it would have been nice to have known more about its capabilities & how it compares & sacrifice a few photos of the tuna salad surprise.