ATI HDTV Wonder Review

By Jeff Fila
October 17th, 2004

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

Full Review

Introduction

If you've ever watched true HDTV programming on a high-definition display, you already know that the image clarity and visual experience high-def provides is beyond compare. Similarly, if you've ever watched an analog TV broadcast on a computer, you've undoubtedly seen how low-quality “regular” TV is. With their HDTV Wonder, ATI has merged the superb image quality of HDTV with the already high-def visuals of a computer display.

At $199, the HDTV Wonder allows you to pull in over-the-air digital broadcasts and regular analog cable TV on your computer. As with other TV tuner cards, the HDTV Wonder also allows you to use your computer as a personal video recorder, with the ability to record TV programs to your hard drive and pause or rewind live TV. Available only in the U.S., the HDTV Wonder allows you to get a taste of crystal clear HDTV broadcasts without having to purchase a new high-definition display.

ATI HDTV Wonder

Image courtesy of ATI Technologies

Features and Requirements

ATI's HDTV Wonder comes in a unique triangular box, a shape made necessary because of the indoor digital TV antenna included in the package. This antenna hooks up to the HDTV Wonder card with a coaxial connector and a six-foot cable which is required to receive over-the-air digital TV broadcasts. Also included in the retail packaging is the card itself, ATI's Remote Wonder (version 1), the usual purple ATI input connector (with S-Video, Composite Video, Left and Right analog audio), and a manual and software CD.

The HDTV Wonder can only work with PCs running Microsoft XP with Service Pack 1 or higher. ATI suggests at least a 1.3GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 64MB or higher video card. However, after testing, we find it hard to believe that anyone with a 1.3GHz processor and 256MB of RAM will have an enjoyable experience with the HDTV Wonder. As you'll see later in this review, the product really is a resource hog.

With a 70 channel capacity, the digital tuner can tune in more stations than you'll probably ever need - in most areas you'll be lucky to get more than five to seven digital broadcast channels right now. With digital TV comes digital sound and if you have a 5.1 channel sound card, you can watch your digital programs in surround sound. The stereo TV tuner has the ability to tune in 125 analog cable channels and must be used independently of the digital tuner. If you want to watch both analog cable channels and over-the-air HDTV channels, you'll have to switch back-and-forth between the applications.

Included with the HTDV Wonder are the same applications you'll find with ATI's All-In-Wonder graphics cards and other TV tuners. ATI's file player allows you to play most types of music, image, and video files and its EAZYLAUNCH application provides an easy to read and easy to navigate front end for TV viewing or file playing. You can use the PVR software for both the analog tuner and the HDTV tuner and you can use ATI's scheduling software to program recordings. Sticking to the same formula as their All-in-Wonder cards, the HDTV Wonder uses Gemstar's GUIDE Plus+ onscreen interactive program guide for the analog cable tuner. There is no guide available for digital broadcasts so if you want to record HDTV, you'll need to look up the shows you want and manually create a schedule. As noted in our Radeon 9600 All-In-Wonder review, GUIDE Plus+ still suffers from some annoying issues, such as its requirement that you manually download the latest guide on a weekly basis.

Installation and Setup

While installation of the HDTV Wonder is not particularly difficult, it is quite time consuming and can be frustrating at times. First, you'll need to make sure that you are in a good location to receive HDTV broadcasts. For best results, the antenna should be placed near a window and pointed towards the broadcast towers. This can be rather difficult to achieve, but one great resource we found while testing the product was http://www.antennaweb.org/, a website that helps you find HDTV broadcasts in your area and even gives you compass directions of the broadcast towers.

Physical installation of the HDTV tuner in your Windows XP system is as easy as any other PCI card. You'll need to hook up both the coax connector for the HDTV antenna and the coax connector for analog cable. Since the HDTV Wonder also includes ATI's input box, you'll need to plug that into the back of the card if you want to input analog video or audio for editing purposes.

While the hardware installation is fairly straightforward and simple, the software installation is quite time consuming. Since this is a new product and ATI often updates their drivers and software, you'll want to check their website to see if there are any newer versions than what shipped on your software CD. If your CD contains the latest drivers and software, installation will be much easier. The CD autoruns when you put it in your computer and prompts you to install the software. If the drivers on the CD are out of date, as was the case with our setup, you'll want to download the updated software from ATI's website. There are four separate files that need to be installed for the HDTV Wonder, and if you want to install the GUIDE Plus+ software, you'll need to install that from your CD. Unfortunately, ATI does not mention this in their documentation or on their website so you basically just have to know — or have had read this review. Installation of all this software does take quite a while and includes a few system reboots. Once installed, ATI's media launch bar runs on system startup and allows you one-click access to all of the HDTV Wonder's features. You can easily turn this autorun feature off and access the programs through your start menu. With the Remote Wonder installed, you can also use the remote to run, close, and control ATI's media programs. There is no default button for digital TV so you'll have to program that in one of the programmable buttons.

When you first run the Digital TV or Analog TV applications, you'll be prompted to set up your channels. The tuner will scan for channels and add them to the lineup. Digital stations broadcast station and programming information with the digital signal, so the HDTV Wonder should be able to name your channels and programs, and give you information relative to the program and the broadcast signal. We found that this didn't work all the time however, and several channels don't broadcast this information. For a true DTV schedule on your desktop, you'll need to refer to an online schedule like the one found at TitanTV.com. You'll have to manually name your analog cable channels because the HDTV Wonder can't do it for you. This can be quite time consuming and seems to be very inefficient, especially since you are inputting your zip code and GUIDE Plus+ knows the lineup. But as mentioned before, GUIDE Plus+ is not the best or most stable TV guide program we've seen. Our setup kept getting a TV listings error when trying to retrieve the data file and we were never able to get the listings correctly. After reading ATI's support FAQ and several forum posts on the internet, we realized we weren't alone.

Usage and Testing

If you've never experienced HDTV before, you'll probably be amazed once you tune in your first digital channel with the HDTV Wonder. Even — or perhaps especially — on a computer monitor, the difference in image quality between analog cable and HDTV is simply stunning, as the two pictures from the same scene in “Law & Order” show below.

Law & Order in Analog

Law & Order in High Definition

If you are lucky enough to get a few HDTV channels over the air you are in for quite an experience. Even though we were watching it all on a 19-inch flat face CRT monitor, the quality and immersive effects of truly digital television were enough to form a crowd around the test computer for a while. We tested the HDTV Wonder in the Albany, NY area which can get ABC, NBC, and CBS digital broadcasts. CBS was hardest to tune in but after some fine tuning of our antenna, we were able to view these networks with little problem. Our local Fox affiliate does not broadcast in HDTV yet — it is planned for January 2005 — and this was a letdown as we would have loved to check out the baseball playoffs in high-def. There were also a few other digital channels we were able to tune in, most notably PBS HD. Nature shows can be so much more interesting when shown in widescreen HD, and we found ourselves spending a lot of time watching this channel. ABC broadcasts Monday Night Football in HD and as the screen grabs below show, the images are crisp and highly detailed.

Recording HD works the same way with the HDTV Wonder as it does with the All-In-Wonder cards. ATI's timeshifting application allows you to pause and rewind both analog and HD programming. Of course high quality recordings or timeshifting will take up a lot of system resources and hard drive space. Our test system consisted of an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton, 1GB of DDR and two different ATI Radeon graphics cards. The system was noticeably slow even with this setup and the HDTV applications running. Taking a screenshot would not only freeze the system for a second, but it would also interrupt the TV broadcast. If you want to watch HDTV and take screenshots or record in high-quality, be prepared to not be able to do too much else on your computer.

We also experienced setup problems with one of ATI's own video cards. Our first install used the Radeon 9600 All-In-Wonder as the video card. The installation went fine and we had the latest Catalyst drivers for the card, but HDTV playback performance was quite poor. In the configuration options of ATI's Multimedia Center there is an application that tests your system to make sure you have the right software, drivers, and compatible hardware. This test showed that our video card was not a supported card and suggested that we use an ATI Radeon video card. Of course we were using an ATI Radeon card. Perhaps this has something to do with the All-In-Wonder version of the card but we've never had a problem using the 9600 All-In-Wonder with any other TV tuner cards, such as the Hauppauge WinTV PVR250. When we swapped the 9600 All-In-Wonder for a Radeon 9800 Pro, the card was recognized as a supported card by the application. This, however, did not eliminate performance issues as video and sound would often get choppy or freeze when using the HD tuner. It seemed that when we turned our antenna around to point towards the location of our local HD broadcast towers performance improved. Just putting the antenna near or at a window doesn't seem to be enough — it should be near a window and pointing towards the towers. This may not be possible for some users though. Keep in mind also that you can't just get a partial or weak signal with HD. Analog TV broadcasts may appear washed out or show interference but still be watchable with a poor signal. A poor signal in digital TV means no image at all. It's either on or off. This means that if you are able to tune a digital station in, you will see it in all of its high-def glory, but if you aren't able to get a good signal, you'll get choppy audio and video and frequent freeze-ups.

Once properly tuned, we only really had HD problems when recording, taking screenshots, or changing channels. Simply watching HDTV worked rather well, but changing channels would often freeze the system and there seemed to be a display bug associated with it. For instance, when changing from channel 17-1, the PBS HD channel, to 10-1, the ABC HD channel, it would show that we switched to channel 10-1 but then the display would show that we were on 17-1. It would freeze for a few seconds — sometimes even minutes — and then eventually tune in 10-1. The display bug happened almost every time we changed channels, but only a few channels would actually freeze the system. We were also annoyed by the unlock icon — used to show if a channel is locked for viewing — which appeared on our full-screen DTV image. This did not appear all the time and we really can't tell you how to turn it off. It seems odd that a channel would show that it is unlocked because logic would say that if you are viewing it, it must be unlocked.

The analog cable tuner was not without its problems either. On several occasions we had problems with the sound being choppy while just watching analog cable. A shutdown and restart of the ATI software would often fix this, but sometimes it required more than one restart of the software. This really shouldn't happen with the relatively powerful system we were testing with.

For more high definition samples, click on the performance tab and link located above and below this review.

Room for Improvement

It goes without saying that ATI's HDTV Wonder could use some improvements. While it may be the first mainstream and most affordable way to get HDTV on your computer it just doesn't seem “ready for primetime” yet.

We really wish ATI would ditch the GUIDE Plus+ software and integrate a better scheduling program such as TitanTV. Since many over-the-air HD broadcasts don't include the digital programming information, it would make sense to integrate a guide/scheduling program into the DTV viewing as well.

We're not sure what ATI can do about the hardware requirements as high-quality HD broadcasts are always going to be resource hogs. But they should be able to improve how the HDTV Wonder plays with other manufacturers' hardware. We've heard of people with the latest Nvidia cards having problems making the HDTV Wonder play nice with their system. Even people with certain ATI cards that the company says are supported have problems. We've heard more problems with AMD systems than Intel-based PCs, but again, that is something ATI should have tested or at least noted on their website or in their documentation.

Conclusion

Performance

Click on the images for a larger picture. Warning, these are large files.

Specs

Specifications

System Requirements:

Intel® Pentium® 4, Celeron™, AMD Athlon® or compatible, operating at 1.3GHz or greater
256MB of system memory
Available PCI slot for HDTV WONDER™ card
Graphics card with 64MB or greater of frame buffer and Microsoft DirectX 9.0 support
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
Interactive Program guide requires Internet connection for listing updates
Remote Control receiver requires available USB port
Sound card with speakers

Operating Systems Support:

Windows® XP with Service Pack 1 or higher

TV and HDTV Tuner Requirements

TV Signal from amplified antenna or cable required for TV function. Version included for:

NTSC (North America, Japan and Latin America)

HDTV signal from antenna (included) required for HDTV function. Version included for:

ATSC (North America). Product does not receive satellite or cable HDTV transmissions.

Compatibility

HDTV WONDER™ is compatible with Microsoft DirectX 9.0 hardware compliant graphics cards and having 64MB or greater of memory

What's in the Box:

Documentation:
- Quick Install Guide
- User Manual
Software:
- ATI Installation CD featuring ATI's MULTIMEDIA CENTER™ software
Hardware & Cables:
- HDTV WONDER™ PCI card
- DTV Antenna
- REMOTE WONDER®
- Coax Cable
- ATI Input Connector

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