• PC World
• » Home Theater

Getting to Know ATI Technical Support

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make the Guide Plus+ record function work. I spent hours on the phone with ATI technical support before they finally gave up--claiming my problem was "unique." Eventually I figured out how to use ATI's TV Player Setup program to schedule and record programs. It worked, but it's not nearly as cool as Guide Plus+.

Another problem I encountered was with the ATI Web server that hosts Gemstar's weekly TV listings. To solve the problem I once again called ATI technical support. They supplied me with a different URL and then asked me to delve into the murky world of Registry settings to make the fix. That's pretty dicey territory for the novice user ATI seems to be targeting with this device.

Taking the Good With the Bad

The TV Wonder USB's picture and sound quality was equal to that of my own PC card-based STB Systems TV tuner card. However, USB's slower data throughput hurt the video performance and curbed functionality.

Although you can record live TV programming, the USB port's bandwidth limitations won't let you pause live television (also called time shifting), which is a popular feature of standard digital video recorders. And on several occasions sound and video appeared to be slightly out of sync when I used Microsoft's Word for Windows and Internet Explorer at the same time.

Also, you can save files only as AVI files. Pricier versions of ATI software support the MPEG-2 encoding standard, which can make the same files nearly two-thirds smaller, saving serious space on your hard drive.

While you can view video at any resolution size, you can capture video only at 352 by 240 (that's about a 3-by-4-inch window). At that size, 1 hour of programming at the preferred 30 frames per second requires about 1GB of hard drive space.

Other Options

Of course, the TV Wonder USB is only one among many USB-based TV tuner cards. For example, Pinnacle Systems Studio offers the $90 PCTV USB (which PCWorld.com reviewed in May 2000). And IRez Technologies offers the $100 USB TV. Both products also ship with a FM tuner and basic video-editing software.

Another USB unit with a nice extra is Avermedia Technologies' $100 AverTV USB, which supports all 181 cable channels (versus the Wonder's 125). And for Apple fans, Eskape Labs offers the $180 MyTV USB TV Tuner, which works with iMacs and G3s. (ATI has a Mac version of TV Wonder for USB, priced at $100.)

In the end, despite all the other options out there and the problems I encountered, I'd still recommend the TV Wonder USB--for some users. If you're looking for simple, inexpensive TV viewing on your PC, it's a good product. If you're a more sophisticated user interested in capturing high quality video--and you're looking for a genuine alternative to TiVo--forget it.

• See more like this:
• USB,
• TV tuner,
• video cards,
• DVR,
• PVR