ATI HDTV Wonder PCI TV Tuner card $50

matt91 · #1 10-09-2006, 09:28 AM

FYI...

Buy.com has ATI HDTV Wonder PCI TV Tuner card for $85 - $10 Google Checkout - $25 Rebate = $50. Next best on PriceGrabber is $86 Thanks RebelzYell

http://slickdeals.net/?permadeal=8204#direct_deal_8204

Eventhough I don't have HDTV, my quick search here seems to show that this card works with Sage.

Matt

Fluffdaddy · #2 10-09-2006, 10:01 AM

1)How good a tuner card is the ATI HDTV Wonder?

2)is it an upgrade from a AVerMedia AVerTVHD A180 ?

3) Can you pair up two wonder cards in sage ?

Anyone ?

Not 100% happy with my duel AVerTVHD MCE A180 box, wondering if I can do better.

thanks

Worf · #3 10-09-2006, 11:08 AM

Does anyone know if the remote that comes with this will work with Sage?

lobosrul · #4 10-09-2006, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Worf

Does anyone know if the remote that comes with this will work with Sage?

You will need to use Girder. I was quite happy with my ATI remote, lots of buttons, and if I exited sage it had decent mouse control. But then one day it just died.

I bought a Streamzap remote, and Im not as happy with it. Even using Girder it doesnt have near the functionality as the ATI remote.

BTW girder is really cool due to customized buttons for each program. Meaning if winamp has focus a button might do something different than when sage is.

Edit: ATI HDVT wonder is crap for the analog tuner, digital tuner works fine.

Necro · #5 10-18-2006, 10:01 PM

Any ideas on the processor needed to record off this puppy?

malore · #6 10-19-2006, 07:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necro

Any ideas on the processor needed to record off this puppy?

It just records the HDTV stream (no encoding), so the CPU requirement for recording is small. Watching is another matter. Analog recording is software based, so it has a large CPU requirement and mine looked so bad I disabled the analog tuner in SageTV.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

3) Can you pair up two wonder cards in sage ?

I don't know, but it took ATI support two weeks just to tell me they don't recommend installing a ATI wonder 650 in a computer with a ATI HDTV Wonder, because they don't support it.

Necro · #7 10-19-2006, 02:12 PM

Hrm. Ok. Interesting. Hoping this works fine with my PVR150...given I can get them both into the same PC

malore · #8 10-20-2006, 08:11 AM

Shouldn't be a problem, I have a pvr-250 and the HDTV Wonder working at the same time.

Necro · #9 10-20-2006, 08:52 AM

What I love the most about getting this card is I dont even HAVE an HDTV.

I dont have cable either, hence the wanting of the clean digital signal

malore · #10 10-20-2006, 09:57 AM

Yeah, I used the card for about 8 months prior to finding a HDTV at my price point. Even viewed on a SDTV you get a DVD quality picture and 5.1 surround sound with most prime time shows.

matt91 · #11 10-20-2006, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by malore

Yeah, I used the card for about 8 months prior to finding a HDTV at my price point. Even viewed on a SDTV you get a DVD quality picture and 5.1 surround sound with most prime time shows.

What about watching then watching that video over a MVP? Better than with an analog recording, or is the MVP the rate-limiting step?

Matt

malore · #12 10-20-2006, 12:50 PM

From what I've read in a couple forum posts you need to have SageTV transcode the HDTV recordings so that the MVP can play them, which requires a fast computer (3 ghz was mentioned).

Necro · #13 10-25-2006, 10:49 PM

Well, I got the card. UNfortunately, it seems to like to freeze my PC randomly when I'm viewing live TV...the PC has 1gb of ram, is a Athlon 3400+ w/a Geforce 6200, so I shouldn't be having any power issues....

Hrm..any suggestions?

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