what's wrong with ATI tv tuners?

[keebeen]

It seems like everyone here has or recommends a Hauppauge or Leadtek tv tuner. I was just wondering why no one likes the ATI TV tuners since I was planning on purchasing one. I like the features of the ATI TV Wonder Pro Remote Control Edition - especially the RF remote and the Thruview technology.

Can someone tell me why ATI tv tuners are inferior to Hauppauge and Leadtek tv tuners? Is the video quality very poor or something?

I used to have a Hauppauge WinTV Go and I didn't like the quality of that one very much. I just want good quality TV and the ability to record a few shows once in a while. I don't know if I need an MPEG2 decoder since I have a P4 3.0C GHz CPU with 1GB RAM... that should be enough right? or no? Does MPEG2 decoder yield better video quality too?

Thanks for the help.

 

[charloscarlies]

I have an ATI tv card that is about a year old I think. I believe it's the all-in-wonder...but I'm not 100% sure. For me the drivers just flat out sucked. Anytime I tried to record something off the tv it just froze and I had to reboot. I tried many different things too...just got sick of it.

 

[clicknext]

The quality of the TV, in my opinion, is pretty good on my All-In-Wonder Radeon9600Pro. I've never used another TV tuner, but I've got no problem with mine. However, ATI's software could definately be better. The multimedia centre is both hard to use and hard to install properly. My computer used to record TV shows fine, but now when I try to record all it does it flash once and then keep playing TV. I've tried so many things, but havn't been able to fix it.

 

[thedarkwolf]

The hardware encoder yields better video quallity alteast from everything I have heard. I don't have anything to compare my pvr-250 to.

 

[Luthien]

OMG, same here. I would install my ATI AIW and it would work then for no reason I could figure out something wouldnt work with the tv recording or the TV schedule software. I never figured it out either and this is the first time I have seen people post they had the same problems versus it is the best and mine works perfectly or no comment. OH, GOD OF VIDEO CARDS PLEASE LET NVIDEA WIN THE NEXT GRAPHICS CARD WAR AND I SWEAR I WILL NEVER BUY ATI AGAIN! (UNLESS ATI MAKES A VIDEO CARD THAT IS FASTER WITH AWESOME DRIVERS AND FREE LONG DISTANCE TECH SUPPORT, ).

 

[rbV5]

Apparently if people don't know if they have an AIW graphics card, or a TV Wonder addon tuner card I'd have to go with user error for the most part.

 

[keebeen]

k, so i ended up buying the TV Wonder Pro Remote Control Edition and i'm gonna end up returning it. when in installed it with the software cd that it came with, it was working fine at first. but after opening and closing the tv tuner software a few times, the image would just freeze and only the audio would play. i would have to kill the application manually and then when i try to start it up again it wouldn't start up. the software that came on the cd was ATI Multimedia Center 8.2

i tried downloading the latest version from the ati website (8.9), but it wouldn't even install... ie. the setup program would not even run.

i have to agree that when it did work initially, the quality was quite good. but the ati software really sucks. it's too bad.

 

[GullyFoyle]

It's easy read about the good reputation ATI's All-In-Wonder cards have garnered, and think it applies to all ATI's tuner cards. But it's a totally different situation.
The All-In-Wonders use the "Theater" series of chips that ATI designed from the silicon up. They know what they are doing with these.
ATI's external TV cards use the same chipsets as a hundred other brands of cards, except they do a quickie job of trying to run them with their own custom software.
If you're going to run a TV card with a Conexant chipset, you might as well buy the Leadtek, which has a more mature software package that was designed from the ground up to work with that chipset.