ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 Review

[Dave Baumann]

http://www.beyond3d.com/siteimages/b3dsmall.gif (http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/tvwusb/)ATI’s MultiMedia Group work on a number of consumer and PC convergence devices, with the All-In-Wonder series being one of their most well known. Here we are looking at another product from this group, the TV Wonder USB 2.0, which aims to bring the highest quality external tuner solution to the PC market.<blockquote>"Internally the we can clearly see TV Wonder USB 2.0 uses the large Philips analogue Tuner "can" which was previously used on most of ATI's All-In-Wonder products, among other applications, which is obviously the main contributor to the size of the unit. Another component that is familiar from recent All-In-Wonder boards is the Theater 200 chip."</blockquote>Read the full review here (http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/tvwusb/)

[Anonymous]

Hey Dave, I sent you an email on your review. I'd appreciate a reply.

As for this device, I think the ADS USB InstantTV, reviewed here (http://www.tcmagazine.info/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=66) is a much better, though lesser known, alternative.

[[maven]]

Typo: The next-to-last word in the review "hose" -> "those".

[Anonymous]

Dave, did you notice if there was any delay caused by the USB transfer? I played around with the Hauppauge USB 2.0 solution and there seemed to be a second or two delay vs. watching the same stream on a regular TV (time scaling was not on). This seriously screwed up trying to play my XBox on it. I just wanted to know if this was a Hauppauge thing, or a USB thing. Thanks.

[Reverend]

Mulholland Drive, YES!

[digitalwanderer]

Mulholland Drive, YES!
Huh? :shock:

[PatrickL]

Don't mind Reverend, he had a flashback of the girls :)

[Reverend]

:oops:

Damn, I thought that was Mulholland Drive. It's that stupid Sex and The City, right?

[PatrickL]

Yes.

But i am sure you remember more of the other one because of the intriguing story :twisted:

[Tim Murray]

Yes.

But i am sure you remember more of the other one because of the intriguing story :twisted:
C'mon, who doesn't love David Lynch?

[digitalwanderer]

C'mon, who doesn't love David Lynch?
Depends on what he's wearing.... ;)

[John Reynolds]

C'mon, who doesn't love David Lynch?

Christ, I hate that guy. F'in hack director.

[Himself]

What I found missing was any mention of audio beyond requiring a sound card. I have found that video and audio sync up to be a bit of a problem in the past with similar devices, does the audio have to be captured with the sound card's line input or is the sounds card just needed for sound?

Also, while converting to mpeg 2 is nice for burning dvds off, a more useful feature for things like tv shows would be divx capacility, not sure if the mpeg 4 is that or not.

A more thorough run down of the software would be handy as well, as you are stuck with the one software with these kinds of products sometimes. If the software isn't to your taste or is buggy then you are stuck with it.

[Dave Baumann]

Couple of minor updates. The product itself is USB 2.0 only - the reduced size / block transfer modes is a compatibility mode if you find your USB 2.0 system is having issues with the bandwidth of the full quality mode. The video output is in YUV format which means the transfer rate is about 22.5MB/s

]Typo: The next-to-last word in the review "hose" -> "those".

Ta.

Dave, did you notice if there was any delay caused by the USB transfer? I played around with the Hauppauge USB 2.0 solution and there seemed to be a second or two delay vs. watching the same stream on a regular TV (time scaling was not on). This seriously screwed up trying to play my XBox on it. I just wanted to know if this was a Hauppauge thing, or a USB thing. Thanks.

Didn't actively test that, but one thing that might certianly affect that is whether the system is compressing the video as there may be a delay in doing the compression and then uncompressing the video back on the PC for playback.

[Himself]

Dave, did you notice if there was any delay caused by the USB transfer? I played around with the Hauppauge USB 2.0 solution and there seemed to be a second or two delay vs. watching the same stream on a regular TV (time scaling was not on). This seriously screwed up trying to play my XBox on it. I just wanted to know if this was a Hauppauge thing, or a USB thing. Thanks.

I have tried that kind of thing with my ads instant dvd box, there is too much of a time gap between the video feed and what you see on your monitor for that to work IMO.

[Dave Baumann]

What I found missing was any mention of audio beyond requiring a sound card. I have found that video and audio sync up to be a bit of a problem in the past with similar devices, does the audio have to be captured with the sound card's line input or is the sounds card just needed for sound?

Everything is transferred over the USB2.0 input, uncluding the sound. Didn't notice any issues with sync.

Also, while converting to mpeg 2 is nice for burning dvds off, a more useful feature for things like tv shows would be divx capacility, not sure if the mpeg 4 is that or not.

MPEG4 isn't DIVX, AFAIK, and the DIVX codec isn't supported natively by the software.

A more thorough run down of the software would be handy as well, as you are stuck with the one software with these kinds of products sometimes. If the software isn't to your taste or is buggy then you are stuck with it.

Its the same MMC software thats covered in the All-In-Wonder reviews, so the links at the end should provide you with some more info.

[Himself]

[edit by DB] - Crap, pressed the "Edit" button, rather than the quote :oops:

If you want to retype your message Himself, please feel free. Sorry about that!!

hehehe, no biggy..

[Dave Baumann]

How is the sound, AM radio or CD quality?

Not sure I'd put a definite on it, although I didn't really notice much difference between it an the AIW, but that could also be related to the soundcard and speakers I'm using (which ain't the best).

Another issue I have found with these kinds of devices is USB incompatibilities with other devices, plug in the gizmo and your mouse stops working and foolishness like that, or if you have a webcam the drivers arse up entirely, etc. Guess you would have mentioned it if you ran into that kind of thing..

Well, I'm using USB mice, and there were no incompatabilities - as the update points out the total bandwidth used is around a third of the USB2.0 bandwidth so there should be plenty left over. What I didn't try was plugging a camera in and downloading a bunch of images to see if the transmission interupts or if the transfer from the camera to the PC is slowed.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

After reading all the rave reviews. I installed it and it comes with so many faults. The signal is good, but the TV clarity is the worst with green lines everywhere. ATI has listed this in its known issues. The sound is only a cackling noise. :cry: Dont buy this unless you want to suffer. It keeps saying that it needs WDM capture driver Why I dont know. The PC Check sucks too. I tested on 2 laptops. One was S3 SuperSavage and another ATI Mobility Radeon 7500. Terrible display. Thinking of returning the product. :-(. In the supersavage driver with WinXP, it does not even attempt to install the TV program. I have tried uninstalling and installing 10 times. I updated my drivers, Directx9.0c nothing helps. Any suggestions ??

[Dave Baumann]

AFAIK the WDM capture is required for the Theater 200 chip operation - this may be the cause of some of the issues that you have.

[Anonymous]

I found out that Radeon 7500 I have can support only low bandwidth. Dont know why the graphics chip should affect the data coming in to the computer unless it is too slow to process the large data coming in.

I think Low bandwidht option reduces the resolution of data coming in. I tried to record in DVD at MPEG2 704*480, I got the green lines.

Another thing I found is that it is not enough for the graphics chip to have video overlay. There is a complex set of DirectX DirectCAPS and DDCAPS_3D. These are various settings supported by the chip. There is a tool to check it. DXCapsViewer.exe. It is in DDK. So your chip may play DVDs but not accept USB WONDer.
=====================
Installation steps to avoid failures:
=====================
Install the USB update for WinXP- Reboot.
Install Directx9.0c - Reboot.
Test DirectX using dxdiag.
Finally install separately the USB Drivers, the MMC and then the Guideplus. Make sure to reboot after each install.

I am not sure how much of my info about theDDCAPS is accurate. But I saw that the install was checking all this. Will sb from ATI shed light on this?