AMD HDTV WONDER TV Tuner - 100-714127
ATI HDTV Wonder PCI TV Tuner Remote Control Edition

I bought this HDTV card and my sytem met the requirement how ever you signal and application usage will dramatically affect the HDTV cards performance. Basically you have to have a high end system that you want to dedicate to TV functions and nothing else. Kinda seems like a waste to me. Buy a HDTV instead.
 
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Doesn't fully work in Media Center PC(only digital part works). Wish I'd understood that before buying. Relocated it to XPPro system -- keeps freezing PC. Relocated to XPH system. Same thing. Not a heat issue. Installed software first from CD then downloaded & installed software from ATI -- installed those as "updates" per their instructions. Still freezes. Probably bad card. Also, the USB transmitter sucks. If it's hooked up directly to the motherboard in the rear of the board, or on the front or back panels connected to the motherboard or the cursor dances around all wrong. There's uber-RF-interference. The only time the remote control works is when it's connected to the USB hub on my keyboard (Zboard). Wish I'd known that too because I'd rather use my Logitech S510 wireless keyboard/mouse or Gyration wireless keyboard/mouse with it. Bottom line avoid this product.
 
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This card has excellent digital reception and is a big improvement on my X1900 AIW card in the analog department (the AIW has no digital stage). In most respects this is a superior card to the subsequent 650 TV Wonder card, especially in terms of s-video/composite capture quality. Indeed the HDTV Wonder has a superior analog TV picture - which is relevant until at least Feb 19th 2008 when America goes digital. The real negative aspect of this card is the lack of Vista drivers and application software. This card is no longer in production by ATI and is effectively a discontinued model. Consequently it should be heavily discounted. The card does install for Windows MCE (digital side only) and in Windows XP you will see the familiar ATI button bar to select DTV, TV, Player, DVD etc.. By contrast, the 650 Wonder card in XP has a "media center" application which personally I don't care for; but it probably makes sense if your primary hook up is a TV. The HDTV Wonder card comes with an indoor aerial and a remote control - the 650 TV Wonder card has no aerial and the remote control requires you pay postage to get the *free* remote.
 
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It does not work with Windows MediaCenter and is malfunctioning constantly. Stay away from it.
 
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I had a great deal of difficulty getting the HDTV Wonder to work correctly. The supplied documentation is very limited. I made several attempts to get help from ATI by email and telephone but they would not even reply. I was able to get no tech support whatever from ATI.
 
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I have been trying to get this HDTV tuner card working for a week with no luck. So many erros I can't think straight. Don't believe me...do a google search for "HDTV Wonder - TV player failed to initialize" and see how many people say to just send the product back. ATI support is terrible. Save your time and money.
 
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I've had the HDTV Wonder (remote version) for just over 6 months, and had to resort to using it for the main purpose for which I bought it...to record live HDTV (mainly the Alabama public TV's HD feed) for later watching and archiving to DVD. Neither the supplied software, nor upgraded ATI software was reliable. I experienced very frequent crashes and missed recordings. I upgraded my OS to Windows Media Center 2005 and use the Kram drivers to make the MCE app work. MCE does a superb job of recording scheduled over-the-air HDTV programs. Though the Kram drivers also allows the use of the NTSC tuner, I've not tried it. With MCE's recorded file format, DVR-MS, almost any media player can play back the recordings. For archiving, I process these with DVR-MS Toolbox, then author and burn with Cyberlink's PowerProducer. With this setup I'm happy. I don't need to use the HDTV wonder to watch live TV, because I have several other options. Watching live HDTV has many limitations even with an overclocked 2.13 Core2 Duo processor, slow or no remote response, some lip-sync issues and jerky video. With MCE or the ATI app it simply takes a much faster processor to keep the video moving smoothly. For recording HDTV it is worth what I paid here with rebates, $49.95.
 
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I just received and installed my card last night. Installed the driver and MMC using the accompanied CD, but it didn't work. Went to ATI web site, downloaded and installed the latest driver. All work fine now! Still haven't upgrade to the latest version of MMC because I've heard some not-so-great stories about the latest MMC having problem with this card, so I'll wait. But after hearing so many people having bad experience with this card, especially those with a nvidia video card (which is what I have as well; nvidia 7900GTO), I was surprise to have it up and running within 15 min or so. Autoscan picked up most of the OTA HD channels. Visual quality is way better than I expected, very sharp and clear! Signal is quite sensitive base on the placement of the antenna. Lots of trial and error, but overall, quite happy with the purchase!
 
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This product is not for the tech-wary. My version apparently was an early production model being clearanced (the installation CD has a 2004 copyright date). When the Remote Wonder receiver was plugged into a USB port, the computer intermittently would not start and gave me a blue screen error message saying it was protecting itself against a hardware problem. Downloading and installing the latest Remote Wonder driver from ATI resolved this issue. The remote control then did not work; EAZYLOOK must be turned off completely in the Multi Media Center (not the TV) for all of the functions to work. I found reception is more sensitive to the orientation of the antenna than it would appear. Even though all of the local channels were found during autoscan, there were occasional picture delays and a display of "Video stream format HD:720p" every 5 minutes. Taking greater care in orienting the antenna toward the TV station transmitters resolved this issue. I have had excellent results using the PVR to record TV programs and then transferring the program to DVD; the picture is much clearer with more realistic color contrast than with a VHS tape. Buyers should also know that the NTSC tuner is not recognized by Media Center Edition of Windows XP and you will need to use the ATI software to view the TV. Overall, the picture quality is excellent, but it was a challenge to set it up. It is still a great value for the money.
 
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I'm very happy with the HDTV Wonder PCI card. It installed easily, the provided CD software seems to work fine on XP Pro, contrary to many reviewers (I had already installed DirectX9.02c, and MDAC 2.8 (free MS downloads). My PC isn't particularly powerful (AMD 2500)and has only a built-in 64 MB shared video chip on my ASROCK motherboard (SiS video) but HDTV and regular NTSC both play and record fine when I have a good signal. I'm also impressed with the $29 Zenith/Phillips indoor HDTV antenna included in the kit. It is best of breed and works well if you are within 20-25 miles of the transmitter and don't have any obstructions in the way. I haven't seen a better bargain anywhere. It would be worth the price just to migrate VHS tapes to MPEG on DVD. The HDTV tuner is a real bonus. Note: It only works with Windows XP, & maybe MCE, not 2000. Thanks for the free shipping Buy.com!
 
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I love this card. It installed easily and is working great with my Windows Media Center 2005 computer. I'm picking up 20+ Over The Air HD stations with great signal strength using the antenna included with the card. Buy a bigger hard drive, you'll need it to store video, MCE HD video runs about 6GB per hour.
 
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Great price considering it comes with an excellent TV antenna and usb/rf remote control. Installation went well. Not thrilled with the accompanying software but I purchased knowing there were issues. I'm using the card with Snapstream's Beyond TV. Working great, even the included remote works with Beyond TV. Very happy with purchase.
 
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Bought this PCI HDTV tuner for my self-built 1.8 GHZ P4 machine with 128Mb GeForce FX5500 video card, The picture shows on my 20" LCD screen looks being greate and stunning, For considering the free of the air HDTV signal, it's good value. Never made remote controller work inspite of upgraded newer driver, when trying to upgrade to newer driver, crashed my machine and have to use Window XP restore feature to go back and re-install CD-ROM older driver came with. Be aware, on the ATI webside, the new driver's decoder portion has a bug doesn't allow you install it, so you have to go back to the CD-ROM driver came with card.
 
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I was simply amazed at the ease of installation and picture quality with this product! I didn't expect the remote to work as well as it does. The hdtv signal received form the included antenna is far superior to any i've even seen before. I highly recommend this capture card to anyone interested in adding tv capability to their computer. The availability, price, and delivery from buy.com is second to none. I am a loyal customer for life!
 
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ATI seems to have problems writing decent drivers for its products. When I purchased my All in Wonder card years ago there was some trail and error to get all the parts working. So hang onto your install discs so you can reinstall or go back to an older version of the software if needed. Other than the driver issue, this card works great, good picture, sound, and features. Users of older systems beware, the HDTV video and audio are choppy if you have a slower processor and will not work at all with a lesser video card. Read the system requirements.
 
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I am using it as a cable decoder. It receives all the analog channels with no problem. Like some of the new HDTVs, which can decode even digital signal off the analog cable, I was hoping this card might do that too. It does not. I connected cable on the digital signal port also, no luck. Over the air DTV/HDTV channels come fine. I have a samsung over the air decoder and a 61" HDTV, which work fine. Watching regular cable channels, and over the air DTV on my computer is worth more than the money.
 
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I have a 50" panasonic plasma monitor with no tuners. My cable company HD box does not do PIP(picture in picture) but my tv does. I already have a media center PC hooked up to the plasma to watch dvd movies I have "backed up" onto a hard drive so all I needed was an HD tuner so I could use the PIP feature on Sundays to watch 2 NFL games. An HD tuner for 50 bucks is a bargain. The install was fairly simple. Put the card in, loaded the software, and amazingly it all worked. I run HD from the antennae and regular tv from the cable. HD reception went from 15 channels to 32 channels by putting the antennae on the roof, mostly foreign stations but I got the main football ones I needed so now I watch both games in HD. HD reception is as good as cable. How many stations you get depends on your location and antennae. ATI's website is a little confusing about the software so I just stuck with what came in the box because it worked. Running this on WIN XP PRO on an AMD Athalon 3200 self built PC with an Nvidea 6800gt AGP video card.
 
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I bought this card for 2 reasons: Watch HDTV and play my Nintendo and Playstation on my LCD Monitor. <BR> For HDTV, this card works very well. I am about 40 miles from all the Chicago tranmission towers, and I was even able to tune in FOX with the antenna in my basement! The signal looks fantastic. <BR><BR> However, for it's S-Video input, I am not impressed. The video quality is decent, but even after turning off the On-Demand delay for the S-Video input, there is still about a 1 second delay from when I push a button on the game controller to when the action from the Playstation is displayed on the monitor. That delay is killer for trying to use the card for any game console. I tried to bypass the ATI drivers and use Microsoft's GraphEdit, and there is no perceivable delay there (thus, using a game console is possible). However, there is no ability to scale the image to the LCD resolution, so if I try to go fullscreen with GraphEdit, the image is horribly pixelated (The ATI card does a nice job of upscaling the image, but the delay makes it unusable). I have yet to find any 3rd pary software that will show the S-Video input; they all are written for the HDTV input. <BR><BR> So, if you are looking for an inexpensive, but quality HDTV OTA receiver, get this card. If you are looking for a game console interface to your PC, try somewhere else.
 
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Pros: the included antenna is great, it's pulling in stronger signal sitting on my desk pointing thru 2 walls compared to my attic antenna. All of the digital channels show up in the scan. Cons: ATI software installed easily but it uses a lot of cpu and starts to stutter, drop frames if you're doing anything else (like pulling up a web page). I never got the remote control to work in XP, interestingly enough, my PC is dual-boot and when booted up in Linux the remote control is automatically recognized and works just fine. Changing channels can make the DTV hang, reboot required to clear. Using the WatchHDTV freeware seems to be much more reliable. I've tried downloading the newer software from ATI but it didn't improve things.
 
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This is the first ATI product that installed smoothly and so far appears to be bug free. Good HDTV reception and picture quality. The full screen analog TV picture quality is mediocre at best. Good value fron Buy.com at $60 delivered (after rebate), not so at the full retail price.
 
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Great product at an incredibly low price. Pro: Great picture quality and features. I utilize the TV on Demand (ability to rewind live TV to see what I missed when distracted), Pause TV and Record TV programs. All work superb. Con: Slightly buggy software, but it is very minor.
 
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I've been watching for an HDTV tuner card and this is by far the best price I've seen on one regardless of features. That it includes a remote and an NTSC tuner as well makes this too tempting despite the numerous annoyances which include: only works with XP, not 2000 or earlier, only with a video card with 64MB frame buffer (many built-in cards do these days), you must download 40+ MB of driver updates which will require at least a friend with a broadband connection, plus a descent video card ($60 up) and of course you need a strong HDTV signal which means you must be within 20-25 miles of an HDTV transmitter. If you have all that, then with some fiddling you should be able to watch and record HDTV broadcasts (major networks) while waiting for the prices to come down on HDTV's or the next generation DirectTV satellite late next year, or a lot more HD content besides CSI and football. I assume the resolution is 408p at best, not much better than a regular TV but for $60, still a bargain. I'm hoping I can make this work on my AMD 2400 with 512MB & built-in 128-bit 64MB video and maybe even record some DVD playbacks or migrate some VHS video to DVD. I'll try to update this later with the results. Bottom line, it is worth $60 to play around with, maybe even $85 for some. Note: this card may be a special production run and not exactly like the regular products described on ATI's website. The current drivers will probably be the last update for this hardware.
 
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This card works great. The HD quality is superb (if you get a signal...). The software was a bit of a hassle to install, I had to download new drivers from the ATI website (worst website ever). But once everything was properly set up, it worked extremely well. There simply is not a better card on the market for this amazing low price.
 
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I've read many reviews that said this device will take you hours to get it operational. well, I got it up and running in less than 30min. I was able to watch my existing TV cable and HDTV ota which is awesome!! to previous rewier, to change the path you need to Ctrl+s then go to "video recorder" tab and click on "one touch record" then you'll find "folder for recorded file" that's where you'd want to change
 
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Easy to setup. It took 15min for me to start from opening the box to run the TV. The software was bit confusing in the begining, but then was ok. I still didn't find a way to figure the change the path to save the TV mpeg files to different path then the default. Overall the performance was good. [rajkumar]
 
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The software with the card has problems with Windows XP MCE even with those suggested patches installed. The Windows XP MCE won't recognize the card. However, it works on Windows XP systems. The HDTV pictures looks great once the installation is successful.
 
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HDTV Tuner card + Remote + HDTV Antenna + line in jacks = Worth the money. Yes this kit is definitely worth the money, came in a huge box suprising and fast shipping from Buy.com. Then again I live in the bay area so does buy.com... There's some annoying things about ati is there software it's typically really bizarre. You have to scour to find the updates and the install process was a little buggy. If you have an ATi card it's also cool because you can have the "TV" display faded in the back ground as you work etc. As for performance wise it's very good almost excellent however I've seen another company who makes HDTV tuners for PCs. I forgot the brand but it's $ about $150 just the tuner and remote. The Antenna the Ati hdtv wonder is decent however if your a "hardcore TV freak" then maybe you might want to upgrade. I have a bad angle out the window so I don't get all channels. Overall it's good.
 
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The installation took a little long time then average.. Thanks to the previous reviewers, I download the latest driver from the ati site, ALSO If you are using MCE2005 make sure you have the rollup pack installed. It's working like a charm!
 
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After reading so very much about tons of people having problems with this item, I decided to give it a go. I had absolutely no problems on installation using ATI's newest drivers from their web site. I'm using an ATI 9800Pro on XP Home by the way. The instructions that came with the package are a bit lacking in my opinion, but it all installed without a hitch. I have to admit, after fooling around with ATI's bundled software, I agree with most when I say that it's really junky. I ended up downloading a trial version of BeyondTV 4. The interface is attractive and for some reason I tune more channels with it than I do with ATI's MultiMedia Center. I ended up purchasing this software and use it now instead of ATI's bundled junk. All in all, the picture quality is truly amazing. Watching 24 or CSI or even Conan O'Brian at night is just awesome in 1080i.
 
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I installed this on my nearly 5 year old Dell Dimension 8100 with incredible ease. Plugged in the card, inserted the CD and followed the on screen prompts. XP PRO is my OS. This is not the computer that I purchased this card for, however I can only assume that my new HP with XP Media Center will also be a snap. ATI does have a driver update on their website, easy to get to. Highly recommend this product. Only drawback for me is that I have only one HDTV signal in my area, but I knew that ahead of time. This still works for analog, and for hooking up my old 8mm camcorder to digitize my old home movies etc.
 
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The HDTV wonder works great! Easy installation and setup. The included HDTV antenna works great, I also bought a Terk Unamplified Indoor HDTV Antenna and it is useless compared to the included ATI antenna.
 
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This card is amazing. Under Media Center 2005 its a star! I tune the analog channels I get from basic cable, then key in the hd channel #' 1101 - 1402 directly for digital high definition viewing. You have to get one. The price on this is really great too.
 
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I've been running this hidef tv tuner for five months. It givers great HD tv. I had no problems installing the card, and I used the latest drivers from the ATI website, which is what every one should do. I've read the other reviews here and other places. People should pay attention to the minimum requirements, like the need for a graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0, and have a decent antenna. If you don't have decent antenna, you know you won't get a good HD tv signal. Also, this high definition video we're talking aobut. You need a pretty fast processor and at least 512 MB memory. The recommended pc requirements are right there on the box, comply and you should get to work.
 
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