Summary
There's no denying the incredible picture improvement of HD broadcasts over regular analog TV. The ATI HDTV Wonder does a good job of allowing you to enjoy this amazing video on your computer at a fraction of the cost of an HDTV. Of course, an HDTV is often much larger than a computer monitor and if you get an HDTV set, chances are you will just get an HD tuner from your cable company — allowing you to enjoy all of the HD cable channels as well as the over-the-air broadcasts.
Unfortunately, the system requirements are quite demanding — in our opinion more so than what even ATI suggests. Even if you have a powerful enough system, HD performance is dependent upon your proximity to a broadcast tower and other environmental factors. As a result, you really won't know if the HDTV Wonder will work well with your system and in your house until you actually try it. Considering it may take several hours to set up the HDTV Wonder and get it working properly, this is just too much time and effort for the average computer user to dedicate to such a project.
If it works, and if you have a powerful enough system to enjoy the full time-shifting and PVR functions of the HDTV Wonder, the product is a great way to introduce yourself to the drastic visual improvements of HDTV. However, until ATI works out some performance and software issues we feel that the HDTV Wonder will only appeal to a small percentage of computer users, and may be a disappointment to a certain percentage of those users.
ATI has officially announced new software and drivers which reportedly fix the issues we ran into with our review unit. Please post updated user reviews after you install the new software and let us know what you think.
Download new ATI HDTV Wonder Software
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User ReviewsMore User Reviews...
by JD on April 7, 2008:
“This is not the capture card for the first time computer user. I've had my card for almost 2 years and it seems to be an ongoing project. I have found that the original software works best, just skip installing the TV listings software (Guide Plus+) it has...” More...
by Mel Renneckar on August 2, 2007:
“ATI's previous products worked just fine until this junk. Frequent frame freezes or complete frames that do not update resulting in ~5 F/Sec video until a channel change and then back resets "something". Updates either don't "initialize"...” More...
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