Review: ATI HDTV Wonder

CrimandEvil

Dick with a heart of gold
Joined
Oct 22, 2003
Messages
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ATI HDTV Wonder @ HTPCnews

ATI has always had a strong line of multimedia products with their TV wonder, All in Wonder and other product lines. But for a long time though ATI has been AWOL from the PC HDTV market, until now. With the release of the new ATI HDTV Wonder card ATI hopes to release a complete package to make receiving HDTV on your PC a breeze. Is this package enough to leave you in awe and wonder or is it to little to late? Read on to find out.

Let me first start by saying that the product I am looking at in today's review is a "Non Qualification Pre Sample". What this means is that this is not exactly the finished product but close enough to the final version that ATI felt comfortable sending out samples to allow reviews time to become familiar with the product. So the performance and anomalies that might be seen in this review may not be representative of the final product. Things such as last minute driver revisions can happen and can change the way something does or doesn't work. With that in mind let's take a look at what we have!
 
FEDEX says that my HDTV wonder will arrive on Tuesday. I'll post some experiences when it arrives.. however I am EXPECTING some serious problems with ATI's incredibly buggy software, as usual.

Anyone else with this card?
 
No you don't:
Graphics card with 64MB or greater of frame buffer and Microsoft DirectX 9.0 support


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

This means you will need a minimum of a ATI Radeon 9500 or Nvidia 5200 card to be able to use this card according to ATI. This may upset quite a few people out there who are still using older cards as they may not like to have to upgrade. I know if I was still using my ATI Radeon 8500 with the HDTV adapter to my HDTV I would be a little peeved. I know that the DVICO FusionHDTV 3 didn't place this type of requirement on the user but if you didn't have a card with DXVA then you would need a much faster CPU since the decoder would operate in software mode.
 
im really confused as to what the difference in the cards are. i am pretty sure i cant get hdtv through my cable tv. but what about satelite...and i see the connections are for antenna's....is this how i receive signal?

im looking at getting satelite but want the best picture quality...would i get something like this or a hauppauge pvr250?
 
For Sat you would use the video out on the reciever box (RCA plugs) and connect it too...say a Hauppauge PVR-250MCE...you'll connect them over RCA to the inputs on the 250MCE card. Look under the sticky for some guides on it but what's going to happen is that nice digital signal from the Sat is going to get converted into an analog signal.
 
once someone gets and hdtv card that can do it in hardware then im all for it. otherwise meh, I like being able to record a show at high quality and being able to do other things such as watch another show, or game at the same time. Im in for a long wait.
 
I have the ATI HDTV Wonder running on a system with: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, Athlon XP 2600+ @ 2.08 GHz, 2x 512 MB DDR PC 2100, and i can record 1920x1088 1080i HD with 20% cpu usage, so if I wanted to i could just mute the recording and watch another show?
:)
 
Okay, if you have two antennas then give it a try. At the very least it couldn't hurt.
 
So, since receiving the uber-massive package via fedex earlier this week, I have been massaging this card into my system with very nice results! The included antenna works very well, I get 80% signal in my area for most channels!

As usual, ATI hardware is wonderful, and the software is... well, at least it works... Kind of..

I love how this card can tune both analog AND Over-the-Air DTV/HDTV signals. I did notice that the analog output does not have nearly the quality of ATI cards equipped with the rage theater 200 chip (newer AIW cards... videosoap).

But I really dislike the "Export" wizard. The only export setting is for MPEG2, I suppose that this is understandable, but I wish that I could natively record in MPEG4 like I could with the AIW. This just adds another step for me, boo hoo. I can see why it won't do this, since it would probably take an Uber-system to crush 1920X1088i in real time. Hardware MPEG4 encoder PLEASE?

Another dislike: Scheduling! i never thought that it could get worse than Guideplus, but ATI continues to amaze! Since DTV schedules are now broadcast directly over the air, I can see what's one next... but not after that! To schedule a recording, I need to go back to the configuration panel and manually input a time and channel. This is sooo backwards! Am I missing something? Should I really RTFM? I really shouldn't have to!

Still, great card for the money, great software compared to the competition (not saying much), Great bundle, and perhaps when ATI get's their act together on the software integration, great product (This should take 6 mo.)

The olympics will look GREAT!
 
i was about to buy this card but i decided to hold off because of the compatibility issues i read about. it doesn't seem to work with the pvr-250 and audigy 2. besides, i'm not going to pay the extra $100 for a bunch of accesories i'm not going to use. i'll wait for the non-remote version to come out, which should retail for $100 from what i've read.
 
i recieved my hdtv wonder in the mail and have installed it and connec
ted both of the coax cables.

then i went to install drivers from cd
, when i got a BSOD something about IRQ, after reboot it auto detected
all hardware i then reinstalled all driver and software from cd. the
n after install and reboot i get "TV FAILED TO INITIALIZE" when i try
to use tv or DTV applications.

so today i reinstalled windows with
sp2 and while installing from cd again i got another BSOD but this tim
e it was a message about driver released something.

then again af
ter reboot i was able to install all drivers and software fine from cd
. but now i still get "tv failed to initialize"

i get that small icon in my toolbar now called ati device detection. thats new but when i open up the mmc config menu all i get is:

NO DEFAULT
DRIVER (UNSOPPORTED)

DEVICE MANAGER
-ati dtv analog audio capture
-" analog av capture
-" analog crossbar device
-" digital and analog tuner device
-" digital bda capture device.


Machine Brand: msi k8n
Machine Model: self bult
CPU Type: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
CPU Speed (MHz): 2530 MHz

6800gt /61.77
nf3250 /4.27
xp sp2 newest rtm
1 gig of ram
chaintech sound envy soundcard

my install order has been xp/xpsp2/mobo/video/sound/asstd software/
hdtv is coax connected to antenna and digital cable box. neither tv or dtv will initialize

installed hdtvwonder physcially
opened up cd autorun/ installed all drivers and software progs from there drivers installed themselves.

i show no resource conflicts or anything of that naturre. frankly im stumped i havent heard of anyone else having this problem and of course ati doesnt answer emails and none of the reviews have posted anything like this. but a fresh windows install on new hardware with latest drivers shouldnt have seriously incompatbility
 
alot of people seem to be getting problems with the hdtv wonder. software issues definitely. check out this.
 
This product is flawed.

My system, P4 1.6GHz 256 MB shows ATIMMC.EXE at 99%+ CPU usage CONSTANTLY !!!

And, of course, video/audio have lots of hiccups like many have reported.

But why am I the only one to be paranoid about this crazy disk activity taking place??? Why am I seeing the disk LED comes on AT THE SAME TIME hiccups occur? No one is mentioning that the stupid TV-ON-DEMAND feature is ON PERMANENTLY and cannot be turned off! I bet this thing is chewing every resources at the expense of good LIVE TV while its crunching MPEG garbage. Unlike other ATI AIW card this option cannot be turned off on the HDTV WONDER. Why?

And I've tried everything - short of re-installing XP in order to get stable picture and sound. Nada.

Then, in despair, I contacted ATi's customer care. And now I am happy to be reporting, on this forum, that have THE answer for the *CPU* usage problem: Add more RAM !!! LOL
 
You have to little ram, sounds like its hitting the swap file when you get the hickups. Decoding HDTV isn't a menial task.
 
It's a software based encoder which means that it uses alot of your system to encode the video, and your specs are pretty low. Unless your using something more modern (around 3 Ghz) I would expect things like that. Low end specs = harder performance hit.
 
on ATI's web site;

http://www.ati.com/products/hdtvwonder/specs.html

Intel® Pentium® 4, Celeron™, AMD Athlon® or compatible, operating at 1.3GHz or greater 256MB of system memory...

I am sure this is what you need as a minuim. 256MB of ram is somewhat low memory now days. 512 to 1gig of ram is more common for powerusers....
 
Ok ok ok.

So I did add 256 MB of RAM.

Guess what? No change whatsoever. Hard disk is STILL going crazy, CPU is STILL topping 100%.

I do have to make a correction; my CPU isn't a P4 1.6 GHz like I reported but a P4 1.7 GHz.

Further investigation:

1) http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4589.html suggests this is a frequent problem.
2) Rumors of incompatibilities with Bound Blaster Audigy 2 cards (to be tested this evening)

I still maintain that TV-ON-DEMAND is causing all this trouble and there has to be a way to disable this thing if all you want is LIVE television. The fact that I am seing hard disk activities, that TV-ON-DEMAND cannot be turned off and that "record time" keeps incrementing all suggest that the sofware implementation absolutely relies on the hard disk to store incoming HDTV feeds. For obvious reasons, the constant reading and writing to disk is always problematic for real-time apps.

To be continued...
 
The fine folks over at avsforums have made mention of the audigy 2 problems also. You might want to check there to see if anyone has a fix yet. Me? I guess I'm either trying a Fusion or picking up a HDWonder from somewhere without a restocking fee ;)
 
mutazx said:
The fine folks over at avsforums have made mention of the audigy 2 problems also.
How about ditching it? ;) lol

I guess I'm either trying a Fusion or picking up a HDWonder from somewhere without a restocking fee ;)
I just saw that Newegg is carrying them for like $189 but I'd go with a Fusion, much better card.
 
... and now the next episode.

Taking the Audigy 2 completely out did not do anything.

I stopped all running tasks and processes I could find. ATIMMC.EXE is still at 99% CPU.

I even disabled the swap and the hard disk still spinning constantly.

Let's hear it again folks: TV-ON-DEMAND is the problem. Here's the deal: I started normal TV using my other TV tuner (AIW 9600 card) and saw ATIMMC.EXE using 2% CPU which is OK. But when I start TV-ON-DEMAND then CPU jumps to 65% !!!

That's just standard TV broadcast. How much CPU would HDTV require? 260%? No wonder.

Like the name implies TV-ON-DEMAND should be ON-DEMAND i.e. when *I* demand it. And right now I just want to turn it off.

In the past I've used the AiW 7200, 8500 and now I am using the 9600. None of these cards ever provided a remotely usable TiVo feature. So I'd just ignore it. But with the HDTV WONDER you can't ignore it anymore. It's a curse if you don't have Dual-Xeon or P4EE-class CPU.

What now?
 
TV on Demand is the "time shifting" part of ATI's app, for a software based card thats what you get. It makes perfect sense that the regular AIW only does ~65% while the HD does ~100%. This is why you avoid AIW cards like the plague in favor of the PVR250 cards, for HD I would suggest getting the Fusion 3 Qam version instead.
 
lol, I haven't touched Creative cards for a while now for several reasons, don't like the bit sampling but the D3 stuff was the last straw.

What are your other specs? I do suspect that your specs are too low for using the HD Wonder.
 
just a note since the fusion is being suggested- no HD card is perfect. there are problems with all of them. check out http://www.avsforum.com/ for a lot of chatter on this. they have a pretty active HTPC section and since all those people are into high end HT gear you'll find a lot of people using HD tuners . . . . or trying to anyway.

i have HD cable, but for the time being decided it sounds like more trouble than it's worth. i'm planning to get a nice stable system up first before monkeying with HD recording. to me, using ffdshow was a higher priority.

anyway, good luck.
 
CrimandEvil said:
What are your other specs? I do suspect that your specs are too low for using the HD Wonder.

Mine?

EDIT: Saw your other post. Not me.
 
Well, now that the dust has settled, I can give you guys some more experiences.

I was successfully able to record the entire set of olympic swimming in 1080i for my friend the swimming coach. He just got a new laptop that has a wide 1280X800 screen, so I encoded the MPEG2 files that the ATI file library spat out into MPEG4 720p which ended up taking about 1/3rd the space. Timing was perfect, as I was able to encode or serve the resulting files to other computers before having to record more for the day.

Had to remove the AIW VE that I was using for my third monitor, as it was causing some stuttering while watching HDTV (AIW VE forcing a compatibility mode) ... but that's okay, since I set up another PC to get the SDTV coverage which included interviews etc...

I noticed that the HDTV wonder only worked properly while I set my GF4 ti 4600 to dual-display. Stuttering, and sometimes blank picture would result from only having the primary display on. Not an issue for me, but good to know I guess. We'll see if the thing plays well with a 6800GT !

I used a controller card and some HDD's I had lying around to set up a RAID0 for all of the recording, and I suspect that it helped quite a bit to have a dedicated array without swap-files or other access. I noticed no stuttering after setting that up. It could be that other's difficulties may have resulted from low system memory causing swapfile hits and hiccuping the recording.

Despite my zoo-like hardware environment, the HDTV wonder gave me very few issues. I think I'll keep it!

Next up hurdles: Experiences with the 6800GT, and Output to a 42' Plasma display (via RGB most likely)

** My Coach friend fell out of his seat when he saw the final product. It made his 10.5Hr flight to Korea much happier. Now he can free-frame and show his students proper form and timing yaay!
 
Did the Mpegs force 4:3? Thats a big issue so I'm wondering if it has been fixed.
 
Marca, I noticed that the "ON-demand" ... "feature" (bug/curse/pain) is a big problem for me too. I saw that it would cache everything from every channel when I was just flipping channels. !!! this chewed up about 20GBs before I noticed it.

I went back to the intialization wizard and told it not to "preserve TV-ON-Demand between sessions"

It solved a lot of issues I was having with blank screeens, stuttering, etc. And it also freed up a whole lot of space! I did have to manually remove the .vcr files left over from the channel-surfing escapade. I could only see them after disabling the "hide protected system files" option.

I wonder if that will help..

You are using this card with the AIW9600 ? Do you get Picture-in-picture like it says it's supposed to do?

Also, do you have the XT version with dual display? I am curious to see how the HDTV wonder will work under such conditions.

thanks!

marca2004 said:
... and now the next episode.

Taking the Audigy 2 completely out did not do anything.

I stopped all running tasks and processes I could find. ATIMMC.EXE is still at 99% CPU.

I even disabled the swap and the hard disk still spinning constantly.

Let's hear it again folks: TV-ON-DEMAND is the problem. Here's the deal: I started normal TV using my other TV tuner (AIW 9600 card) and saw ATIMMC.EXE using 2% CPU which is OK. But when I start TV-ON-DEMAND then CPU jumps to 65% !!!

That's just standard TV broadcast. How much CPU would HDTV require? 260%? No wonder.

Like the name implies TV-ON-DEMAND should be ON-DEMAND i.e. when *I* demand it. And right now I just want to turn it off.

In the past I've used the AiW 7200, 8500 and now I am using the 9600. None of these cards ever provided a remotely usable TiVo feature. So I'd just ignore it. But with the HDTV WONDER you can't ignore it anymore. It's a curse if you don't have Dual-Xeon or P4EE-class CPU.

What now?
 
CrimandEvil said:
Did the Mpegs force 4:3? Thats a big issue so I'm wondering if it has been fixed.

Are you referring to the MPEG2 output file from the ATI library's "Export wizard" (also a pain) ?? It spit out a 1920x1080i MPEG2 file just like it said it would. It apparently tries for "native" resolution, which means that it also spits out a 1080i file for upscaled 480i that is broadcast around here, a great waste of space for simple DTV.

As for MPEG4, I did have to specify that the file is to be de-interlaced and re-scaled to 1280x720p, I used a bicubic-sharp rescale method. It popped out in 16:9 and looks great with little space (relatively).
 
This is in response to Binkt.

Thanks for your suggestion. I will try this evening. So how much CPU is your ATIMMC.EXE using now? (Do Ctrl-Alt-Del/Task Manager/Performance).

Yes, I do have the XT (Dual display) card. My home theater system is a Via P4XB mobo w/ P4 1.7 GHz 100 FSB, 512 PC2100. No overclocking.

One video output goes to a 15" LCD and the other goes to a 1024x768 1200 lumens Hitachi projector (primary output). Audio is driven by the Audigy 2 + Klipsh Promedia 5.1. My wall screen is 4:3 and measures approx 10' across.

This setup has been on-line for 30 months or so. During this time I've upgraded the Audigy to an Audigy 2 and ATI AIW 7200 to an ATI AIW 8500, then finally the ATI AIW 9600 XT.

One nagging bug with the XT card is that everytime I upgrade the video drivers my secondary display defaults to OFF - which means I have to fire up my projector to reset it. ATI claims this problem has been fixed. Right.

I haven't experimented with PIP. I suppose it would be possible to run both (9600 TV and wonder TV/DTV) at the same time, but hey, that would probably choke the CPU even more...or perhaps fix the problem (by NOT RUNNING THE STUPID time-shifting stuff) I'll take a look and get back to you.

Before I go, lets hear it again: TV-ON-DEMAND is buggy.

Ciao
 
Thats odd, I guess they fixed it then. When you go to export a file ATI's software squeezes it into 4:3 instead of 16:9 or atleast thats what I've been hearing all over the forums and in most reviews (for those that bothered to do try it).
 
CrimandEvil said:
Thats odd, I guess they fixed it then. When you go to export a file ATI's software squeezes it into 4:3 instead of 16:9 or atleast thats what I've been hearing all over the forums and in most reviews (for those that bothered to do try it).

Perhaps they were trying some other MPEG2 export setting, like "DVD" or some crap. I really dislike the "Export Wizard" and not being able to set custom profiles for it.

I did update to MMC9.02 from ati's website, in addition to the latest catalyst drivers. Maybe the error was there and I didn't notice it.
 
Binkt said:
Marca, I noticed that the "ON-demand" ... "feature" (bug/curse/pain) is a big problem for me too. I saw that it would cache everything from every channel when I was just flipping channels. !!! this chewed up about 20GBs before I noticed it.

I went back to the intialization wizard and told it not to "preserve TV-ON-Demand between sessions"

It solved a lot of issues I was having with blank screeens, stuttering, etc. And it also freed up a whole lot of space! I did have to manually remove the .vcr files left over from the channel-surfing escapade. I could only see them after disabling the "hide protected system files" option.

I wonder if that will help..

thanks!

Did not help but thanks anyway.

Perhaps this product is flawed because 1) it was rushed to market 2) it is not available in Canada - and ATI employees couldn't care less or have no way to test it 3) there is little competition, so... 4) all of the above
 
marca2004 said:
Did not help but thanks anyway.

Perhaps this product is flawed because 1) it was rushed to market 2) it is not available in Canada - and ATI employees couldn't care less or have no way to test it 3) there is little competition, so... 4) all of the above
It wasn't rushed to market, they took their damn time getting it out. Its your specs, they're too low. Try swapping it into a more "modern" system and see if you have the same problems.
 
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