Digital Trends

ATI TV Wonder Elite March 1st, 2005 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Installation

There are several system requirements that you need to pay attention to before purchasing this product. The TV Wonder Elite is only compatible with Windows XP Home/Professional (with Service pack 2 installed) and Media Center Edition 2005. If you have an older version of Windows, you are out of luck. You might be able to get TV Wonder Elite to work with an older version of Media Center Edition, but it is highly unlikely and we didn't try. ATI also recommends that you have 256MB of memory for best performance, although we would always recommend more memory just to run XP alone.

Installing the TV Wonder Elite is as easy as finding a free PCI slot on your motherboard, plugging it in and installing the software. We plugged our RF receiver in the back of our test system and tucked the cord out of view. Because the remote control and receiver are RF based, it is not necessary to have the receiver in plain view. We were able to control our test system up to about 20 feet (the length of the room) without any problems.

The Cyberlink PowerCinema software that comes with the TV Wonder Elite looks and feels very similar to Microsoft's own Media Center Edition 2005 albeit with limited features. With the ATI version of PowerCinema you can pause, rewind, fast forward previously recorded material and record video just like you can with TiVo or any other Personal Video Recorder. This means that you can program the software to record a specific channel at the time you specify. There is only one major catch — the Cyberlink PowerCinema ATI edition software does not come with a program guide. ATI is promising that a program guide will be included in packaged versions of the TV Wonder Elite later this month, but until then you will have to make due with the ole paperback TV Guide or look for a website online that provides your local channel information. If you purchase the TV Wonder Elite before ATI updates it with the new program guide, than most likely you will be able to update your software via a software update — but don't quote us on that. With the PowerCinema software you can also view other video's stored on your computer, stored pictures and play FM radio broadcasts, just like Windows Media Center Edition. If FM radio is your thing, you will have to purchase an external antenna since ATI does not package one with the TV Wonder Elite.

Cyberlink's PowerCinema, ATI Edition