| PRODUCT DETAILS | | ATI TV Wonder 200 PCI Video Card w/PVR Capabilities |  | |
ATI TV Wonder 200 PCI Video Card w/PVR Capabilities
TV Wonder 200 PCI allows you to schedule and record your favorite TV programs as it is a powerful Personal Video Recorder for your PC. Designed for Windows XP Home and Professional Edition, the TV Wonder 200 PCI lets you watch, play, pause or record programs at will. Save your favorite shows to your hard drive, burn to DVD, or share with your portable media devices. Go further by easily converting your videos to formats compatible with iPod, PSP, and other great portable media players to take your favorite TV shows on the road with you. TV Wonder 200 PCI includes easy-to-use Catalyst Media Center, offering the ability to pause live TV or author and burn a DVD of recorded shows or captured video. As an added bonus, Catalyst Media Center includes a DVD decoder to give you the ability to watch the latest DVD titles, a complete set of multimedia features. Catalyst Media Center takes the concept of the multimedia PC to an entirely new level, taking over where other media solutions leave off. Catalyst Media Center supports HD video are converging on H.264 compression standard along with a number of advanced media formats, such as MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX or WMV9. Enjoy the freedom to digitally schedule and record your TV shows in MPEG2, MPEG4, Windows Media Video 9, AVI, DivX, or H.264 formats System Requirements - Intel Pentium 4, Celeron, AMD Athlon, Sempron or compatible, 256 MB or more of system memory, Sound Card and speakers, Motherboard with available PCI slot, Cable TV signal or amplified antenna required, Installation software requires CD-ROM drive, DVD Authoring requires DVD burner, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows Vista Upgradeable TV Wonder 200 PCI is compatible only with the NTSC TV standard
Manufacturer: ATI
Price Range: $42.49 - $49.99
 ATI TV Wonder 200 PCI Video Card w/PVR Capabilities
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| User Reviews |  | questionable
rating: 2
I am questioning if any video card with TV capability can actually work smoomthy. I have had ATI products in the past and had trouble with their software conflicting and freezing up my computer. And this was no different I finally got the TV to work after hours and hours of hang time and hard shutdowns and rebooting.
Its all so time consuming, you click on something and end up waiting 5-10 mins & it using 90-100% of your cpu, my processor is only a P4 but I have 1024ram, it shouldnt be so hard.
I tried to record, which it would do one touch record now & go until you manually stop it or you click on something else & froze your PC, but it wouldnt time set record and.....and...
the only TV listing is showed was channel 1 channel 2 channel 3 (thats high tech)you still didnt know what was on. I can get the TV lisings on the internet on my home search page, but this software is cooking 20-30 minutes(everytime I reboot)and all it gives me is channel 1 channel 2 channel 3.
I tried to burn dvd, it only has one quality buring option and all my videos were too large to fit on the disk, it wouldnt compress to fit.
But I have another software program that I use to make DVD/Videos that has the same abilities as the Catalyst (or whatever you call it) and it does work better faster and smoother,but it doesnt live up to my fantasy of watching and taping TV on my PC either so I uninstalled that Catalyst and I'm still using the card.
I havent ventured into TV recordings again yet, maybe when I have 100 years of free time I will take a another look at it.
If it sound to good to be true....Blaa blaa Blaa, yeah we have the technology but its still in its infant stage. I think I will wait another few years before I purchase again.
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For the price, it gets the job done.
rating: 3
I bought this card so that I could play my videogame systems on a computer monitor, should I ever run off to college and be without a television. I have seen all the negative reviews it has gotten, but owning one myself, I can say that these "reviewers" havn't got a clue of what they are dealing with.
Despite it being old, this card does exactly what I wanted it to, but with ho-hum results. It isn't because of ATI's software, or the card itself, but because of the sheer number of resolutions that a monitor has vs. the fixed resolution of a regular cathode style TV. Most older game consoles look great on a regular TV, but when displayed through a monitor, the conflicting resolutions make the graphics clarity fall short. In fact they always look worse compared to the TV, even if your monitor is set to the same resolution the game system is outputting to.
In conclusion, I gave this card three stars because it does work the way it should, at least on my XP system. I reiterate: This thing is old, and I wouldn't be surprised if it has issues with Vista. The software front-end is a bit laggy, even on my NASA control center at home, but it is livable. Just remember that ho-hum results come standard when trying to cram one resolution into another. The TV wonder 200 will work in a pinch, but you are better off buying a TV in the long run.
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Good Pic -- Crummy Sound
rating: 2
Pretty easy plug-n-play board. DVD works great, which is why it got two stars instead of one. But when I turned it to the TV mode the sound was hardly there. Also, what sound there was dropped out every few seconds. Everything was hooked up because I was getting sound, but even at full volume it was barely a whisper.
Adjusting the settings was not particularly user friendly either. Help was a joke and there is practically no support as this is an obsolete item.
Would I buy it again? Not on your life. I'm shopping around for a different TV tuner video card and am staying as far away from ATI as I can.
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Complete Garbage
rating: 1
I dont really care for ATI products, mainly because they just never seem to work right, either the software freezes up, it doesnt detect something etc..
Well, this is the icing on the cake, i saw this card and bought it, then i went to Radio Shack and bought a splitter and extra Coax.
I got home, installed the card like it said, keep in mind the website and box said compatible with Vista.
The audio did not work for starters, the video froze up, and keep in mind this is after installing the program for 10 minutes and getting errors all the way through the install.
Then trying to remove the program still gave me errors and issues.
Im taking this card back tommorow, this is the first time I bought something and really didnt read the reviews on it, i should have, it would have saved me time and gas money.
This card is a complete piece of garbage, i dont know much about TV Tuners but this is just horrid.
ATI needs to get their act together.
Oh yeah, i also fell for the free remote deal, but guess what, i already ordered it and now i cant cancel the order so im losing another 10 bucks for a remote ill never use.
This company is just a joke, stay away from ATI prodcuts like the plauge!
Thousands of users reviewing ATI cant be wrong! ATI is just garbage!
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AVOID!
rating: 1
Hardware: It's an antiquated TV Wonder re-named to keep it in the market. The Picture Quality is poor to fair. It is NOT Windows MCE Compatible.
Hardware: 1 star
"Free" Remote: It's NOT Free. You have to pay an inflated S&H charge for it to be sent to you. By the way, they will not send you a 2nd "Free" remote if you've bought more than one TV Wonder. (One per household?)
"Free Remote" Fiasco: 2 Stars, only because it is a nice remote.
Software: The included Catalyst Media Center is so bad, it's basically MALWARE. It can cause serious system problems and is nearly impossible to completely remove. This is a BIG problem, because you can't use this card with Windows Media Center Edition.
Software: ZERO Stars
Conclusion: Inferior Hardware packaged with REALLY BAD Software, AND You have to pay for the "Free" Remote!
I love most ATI Products, but not this one! Avoid like the PLAGUE.
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ATI TV Wonder 200 PCI Video Card w/PVR Capabilities
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