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ATI TV Wonder VE? please help....

Q

QwErTyBk

Member
Has anyone had any experiences with this card? (ATI TV Wonder VE) It has a TV tuner as well as a TV recording feature like Tivo. I have heard that it works very well in non- Windows 2000 systems. I was planning to put it into this system that I will be building:

***note*** I bought the tuner card so I would not have to bring a tv to college. I have not yet ordered the video card, so I can still change it.

1.2 Ghz 266 fsb Athlon
Epox 8k7a
256 mb DDR Crucial Ram
16/10/40 CDRW
Toshiba 16X DVD
40GB IBM 7200 rpm HDD
Hercules Prophet 4500 (this is the card I want as I play a lot of games, but if It wont work w/ the tuner too well, I will probably get the ATI)
or
ATI Radeon LE 32mb DDR (Hacked to 32 DDR of course 🙂 )
SB live value
All on Win 98

So has anyone tried to run this card w/ a hercules prophet 4500? PowerVr is not listed a a supporder manuufacturer on the box. Only ATI, 3dfx, Nvidia, and S3. Will the Herc 4500 work?

Will onboard sound on my epox mobo work so I dont have to buy the sound card?

Should I buy a Radeon 32 DDR instead? Do you think it will play back better or work better overall with the radeon?

Please, anyone who has had any experience w/ this tv card or these video cards please give me some input. I have the tuner card but have not bought the video card yet. Please help! Thanks in advance. 🙂
 
I've used my TV-Wonder (not VE, but the only difference is the full has S-Video in, the VE doesn't) on my Voodoo3, Voodoo5, Radeon 64MB Vivo, TNT2m64 (Gigabyte), 3DProphet 4500 and GeForce256 (Hercules).

It worked fine on all of the cards.
And the Win2k drivers are fine for watching, the record function just doesn't work for crap.
 
So overall are you happy with the tuner? Does it have good playback...comparable to a regular TV? Also which cards did it work best on. I'm particularly interested in that aspect, as I want to get the prophet 4500, but fear that the only way I'll get TV quality playback is if I buy a Radeon Video card.
 
It's comparable to a relatively inexpensive TV.

It's quality is fine, even on an S3 ViRGE (I still own one, and just checked for you 😛 ).
 
Great...thanks a lot!!! I really appreciate all of the help.

Anyone compared the hercules prophet4500 to the Radeon 32 mb DDR or 64 mb DDR. Which is better for the tuner card? I would assume the ATI is better as they are well known for superb image quality and the tuner is also made by ATI....but who knows. Has anyone tried them both firsthand and can tell me the advantages/disadvantages of each?


Thanks all who have helped!!! I really appreciate it 🙂
 
Yeah, I've got this card. Pretty happy with it. Got it at BestBuy.com for $39.95 after $10 rebate. Image quality is pretty good, audio is not bad, and the price is right. Works wonderfully under Win98, but the video editor software is somewhat spotty under WinME. Win2k is not supported out of the box, but you can download an update for that over at ATI's homesite, I think.

My only gripe with it is that it doesn't support on-the-fly .mpg compression when using the video capture feature (the more expensive, TV Wonder (regular) does that). Not a big deal as I simply record using ATI's VCR1 format (a form of .avi) and then use a freeware utility like Avi2Mpeg to convert it into a more generic, .mpg file so it can played on other machines.
 
Cool brian...thanks, but do you know anything about image/playback quality and stability of KyroII vs Radeo card? What video card and processor are you using with the tuner? Do you agree that it is equivalent in quality to a regular tv?
 
TO THOSE USING THIS CARD WITH WIN2K:

Umm, isn't a driver missing from the downloadable package ATi has up? For the "Multimedia Controller" or something like that? I have a feeling that not having this driver has slowed down my system's startup, and causes it to hang on shutdown/restart.
 
I have read that this card has compatability issues w/ windows 2000. I have also heard that drivers cannot be gotten off of ati's website.
 
There ARE Win2K drivers off of ATi's site. However there are 5 "devices" but only 4 drivers in the driver package (its a BETA). One device is totally unsupported, which of course can lead to trouble.
 
I have sever stability problems related to using the card in 2k. 2k itself runs fine with it, the only problem is recording (and ATI makes sure we're aware that it's beta, and not fully supported, but giving a message stating so EVERY time you record).

I also have problems when I run process/bandwidth intensive tasks at teh same time as watching TV.

Once the program has crashed, I have to reboot for it to work again.
 
So does this thing work well with the KyroII (Prophet 4500) or do I need to get an ATI card for it to work well as a TV?


What is the difference in quality between the two?
 
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