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ATI HDTV Wonder Support

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engine1o1

Junior Member
I purchased an HDTV Wonder, and i'm having a lot of problems with it. I've only found a few posts around the web regarding this product, but they are all saying the same thing.

Search words : stutter freeze freezing jitter

ATI's site and documentation are completely useless for troubleshooting.

I couldn't find too many threads anywhere regarding this product so i thought i would create this one to document issues and possible resolutions.

I'll start with mine.

MY specs:
Abit NF7
Athlon XP 2000+ o/c to 2.1GHz (fsb 168)
1GB Generic DDR 400
ATI 9800pro
ATI HDTV Wonder
Audigy 2

I installed all the newest drivers and encoder/decoders from ATI's site, in the order they say to. The cards works, but when i swith to DTV, the picture and sound stutter constantly. I'm getting maybe 1 frame per 3 seconds. First thing i did was reduce my FSB back to stock 133, that did nothing. Then I checked the CPU and mem usage and although the CPU usage was rather high, spiking at 40% it was within reasonable limits(although i expected much less from a dedicated chip). I chose the ATI mmc process in Task Manager and bumped it's priority up to high, just below real-time and that seemed to help a lot, i'm now getting about 5 frames per second (still not watchable). Tonight i will move the DTV antenna to a different window in the house, on the second floor, even though i'm receiving a ton of channels where it is. I will update tomorrow with my results.

But beware people, all those wonderful reviews of this product out there, may be a little premature and misleading. I'm certainly not the only person with this exact same performance problem. And i am quite a bit disappointed in the CPU usage, i've got a decently powerful system and it's currently averaging 30% in DTV? I'm not sure what that huge chip on the HDTV Wonder card is doing, if my CPU is doing soo much.
 
The HDTV wonder uses software decoding, there is no hardware decoder chip. The CPU use is actually pretty low for the amount of processing required for the streams, and that is due to the MPEG-2 decoding of the Video card chip along with DXVA using the shader pipeline..hence the requirement for DX9 class cards for decoding.

Your framerate is horrible, definately not watchable by anyones standard. I have a bit more powerful CPU, but I don't think that accounts for the difference. Mine is perfectly watchable, in fact Monday Night's game I had t say that its PQ is equal to that of my Hardware HD card (which is the excellent MyHD card I've been using for close to 2 years now), absolutely excellent outputing to my 55" display.

I had an up and running Antenna setup and pulling in OTA HD long before getting the HDTV Wonder, so basically it was install the software and hook up the card and cable. It works very well in my setup, channels come in as good as my other setup. My framerate is always very good with the only stuttering when the signal is interrupted.

You'll never get low CPU use with HDTV Wonder due to software decoding, by comparison, my hardware card uses almost 0% CPU when outputting to my display, and only ~10% using the overlay to watch it in a window on the PC.

You should get decent performance however, there is something wrong, and I've seen plenty of posts at Rage3D with glitches, so you are not alone. I'd suggest posting at Rage3D in the AIW forum as well. With your CPU use not being out of line, I'd start with.
* The signal itself
* The DTV decoders

Have you got any decent performance with any DTV (SD or HD) do you get the same performance from the library files during playback, or just the live stream?
 
WOW, thanks for the informed response rbV5.

I can't believe i didnt' realize this was a software decoding card!! I would never have bought it.

I played with my antenna placement last night, and things are much better, still not great, but better. I tried both ends of my townhouse, basement, first and second floors. Obviously, the second floor pulls the strongest signals. I'm going to shoot for the roof this weekend.

My DTV performance is just as good as my HDTV performance. Maryland Public Televisions signlas are strong, and their HD channel si the best i get. So i know everything is working, i just gotta pull better signals.

 
You might want to try a different antenna or amplifiers. My first attempt with HDTV wonder on my existing attic antenna, 15 yrs old and split off 4 ways to other TVs was miserable in that I got only a couple of channels and they stuttered a lot. Then added a 4 output Channel Master amplifier with significant improvement. Just for grins, I added another single output Channel Master amplifier in line with the 4 output amplifier just to the HDTV wonder and stuttering virtually vanished. I figured I need a dedicated UHF antenna even though I'm only 20+ miles from towers. Gave up on HDTV wonder due to numerous other issues though.
 
I also use a channel master antenna and a powered signal booster, it helps quite a bit due to my antenna mounted in my attic, and the fact that I drive 2 HD HTPC's from the same antenna. I live perhaps a little more than 20 miles from the broadcast towers and not quite line of site due to some hills close to my home.

I think the HDTV wonder is a fine card that will only get better as the software matures, I have also experienced a few software glitches, especially concerning full screen output (recently found a workaround that allows full screen output display that made a BIG difference. I now brand it as a fully workable HD PC solution) The software decoding in itself is not that big a deal, but it takes a much more powerful system than my hardware card requires...it is also only 2/3 the price I paid, and it does offer features not available on the hardware card like timeshifting, Burn to DVD from the library applet, ATI MMC support, video desktop, transparent window and EazyLook support, but the software does need polishing and more options for widescreen resolution re-encoding from the libray would be nice.
 
Continuing efforts:

I've move the included antenna into the attic, and i acquired an old directional antenna and put it into the attic as well. Signal strengths are a little better, same on either antenna. I'm gonna try adding an inline signal booster this weekend.

I'm incredibly disappointed in the software, especially the recording aspect. It seems very limited and stripped down. I'd thought after having made so many TV cards, ATI's software would be top notch, but it seems like this is their first attempt. I'm really not liking this product, but i'm stuck with it, so i'll keep messing with it and can only hope an open source PVR package comes out that can take advatage of this card.
 
I'm incredibly disappointed in the software, especially the recording aspect. It seems very limited and stripped down.
Click to expand...

I agree that it could use some more options, the only 16:9 format is full resolution MPEG-2. Re-encoding HD material on the fly is no trivial matter however (its already decoding in software), and I will say however that the recording options are superior to other HD software I've used which basically have a single option to capture the transport stream itself. You can transcode to different formats and burn to DVD from the library, which is a nice feature (with a few glitches however)

The software issues have been noted in every review I've seen, and it is a new product. I expect it to improve quite a bit going forward.

I have to say that unless you get a decent signal so that you can actually enjoy watching the broadcasts that it will continue to fall short of your expectations.
 
FWIW, I switched from HDTV Wonder to a Fusion HDTV Gold-T and what an improvement! Admitttedly, my Radeon 900 Pro 128Mb did not meet the DX9 compatibility requirement, but I'm having trouble believing problems such as not getting video from Fox, the 720p signal from PBS was being interpreted as 480i except when I switched from another 720p station, low volume, and inability to get DD5.1 to work had much to do with graphics card compatibility. Anyway, I'm past day 2 with Fusion HDTV and have no stutters, get all the channels correctly, get DD5.1. The only issue was it seemed sensitive to crashing with sound output set to SPDIF+Direct Sound, or SPDIF+Wave Out. On 5.1 CH Speakers, I've run it for hours without a crash.
 
What file format does this card save HD recordings in? Other HD recording cards saves in a .ts format, and you can load/play back these .ts in full HD, just like original. What about this card?
 
Originally posted by: randym431
What file format does this card save HD recordings in? Other HD recording cards saves in a .ts format, and you can load/play back these .ts in full HD, just like original. What about this card?
Click to expand...

ATI's proprietary VCR format to the library (superset of MPEG-2), from there you can transcode to Full HD resolution MPEG-2, or some 4:3 MPEG 1/2/4 formats. The transport streams actually never make it to your hardrive.
 
I just bought one of these cards in the last month and I like others have had problems. I will be reinstalling all the drivers and software amd the next week to see I can get it working (especially timeshifting).

Also guys look here for a long thread:

AVS ATI HDTV wonder

Y
 
Ya, i gave up ont his card. I too was neer able to get DD5.1 to work, does it even support it? I'm ebay'ng this POS off. I put too much faith in ATI when i should have gone with the little guy.
 
I'm now using mine in a MCE 2005 rig along with 2 eHome Wonder analog tuners. The MCE is a superior frontend for the HDTV Wonder as compared to ATI's MMC (any other HTPC frontend I've tried actually.)

MCE's EPG is great and the DTV is seemlessly integrated with analog SDTV. Timeshifting and PVR functions are also excellent.

My HDTV wonder also worked well for me in MMC to be fair, and I had an already setup system using a MyHD tuner, so my antennae and reception was already established long before ever setting up my HDTV Wonder. The ATI software has some polishing, thats for certain, but it did work very well for me. MCE 2005 seems very polished however, and I'm liking it quite a bit..its a superior HTPC frontnd, and the whole family can use it easily.

Its now superior in every way to my MyHD card except CPU utilization, and its plenty low in my rig for viewing and recording HD at the same time. In fact, its low enough to record 2 analog channels + a digital channel while still using my rig for other things.
 
What is the antenna for? Dont you just plug in your coxial cable from the wall into the card? (is aiw hdtv newb)
 
This is only compatible with Over-the-Air (OTA) signals by antenna. Basically there is no way for it to decrypt satellite or cable swignals.

Y
 
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