ATI Makes It Easy to Watch TV on Your PC
A hands-on look at ATI's TV Wonder USB, which lets you watch and record TV on your PC (on the cheap).Tom Spring, PCWorld.com
If you're a TV junkie looking to better control your daily dose, feast your glazed eyes upon ATI's external TV Wonder USB tuner. It's basically the computer geek's alternative to TiVo, letting you view and record television programs on your PC. But the real advantage is the price: just $100.
Don't confuse the TV Wonder USB with full-blown digital video recorders such as TiVo and its competitor ReplayTV. It's also no match for more versatile (and expensive) PC card options, largely because it uses the Universal Serial Bus port, which is slower than the PCI bus most internal cards use.
What TV Wonder USB can do is make watching TV on your PC easy. Plus, it lets you browse program listings, as well as schedule and store low-resolution versions of your favorite shows.
Getting Easily Attached
The hardware is shaped like an eyeglass case and is simple to install. You just plug the unit's cable into your PC's USB port; no need to even open the lid. Next you connect your cable television line or antenna to a port on the other end of the unit. You'll also find inputs for a VCR, Super VHS, and audio cables.
Once you've plugged everything in and installed the software, you're ready to watch television, play video files, run a DVD, take snapshots of videos, or launch the interactive program guide. The device supports up to 125 different channels (standard cable has up to 181).
One feature I liked, called TV Bar, combines Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser with the ATI video feed. It embeds a mini TV screen in the upper-left corner of the browser window. I can surf and watch television at the same time. Now that's living.
The TV Magazine feature grabs closed-captioning data and saves it as a text file with or without images, which is great for a news junkie like me. You can even set the tuner card to monitor closed-captioned text for "hot words" that can alert you to a news item or program you might want to see. When it detects a hot word, the device brings the television window to the foreground of your monitor.
A Digital Video Recorder on the Cheap
All those features are nice, but what sets the TV Wonder USB apart from competing tuner cards is an interactive program guide ATI calls Guide Plus+.
To use Guide Plus+, you must log on and download seven days' worth of Guide Plus+ television programming from Gemstar. You can search this data many ways, including by actor, genre, or show.
For example, if you like Three's Company (and, gosh, who doesn't?), it's a breeze to search the listings by show name to find out exactly when and where each and every episode of that show will appear that week.
Once you've located the show you want to record, you highlight it, click the Record button, and make sure your PC is on when it airs. At least that's the way it's supposed to work.
Getting to Know ATI Technical Support
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make the Guide Plus+ record function work. I spent hours on the phone with ATI technical support before they finally gave up--claiming my problem was "unique." Eventually I figured out how to use ATI's TV Player Setup program to schedule and record programs. It worked, but it's not nearly as cool as Guide Plus+.
Another problem I encountered was with the ATI Web server that hosts Gemstar's weekly TV listings. To solve the problem I once again called ATI technical support. They supplied me with a different URL and then asked me to delve into the murky world of Registry settings to make the fix. That's pretty dicey territory for the novice user ATI seems to be targeting with this device.
Taking the Good With the Bad
The TV Wonder USB's picture and sound quality was equal to that of my own PC card-based STB Systems TV tuner card. However, USB's slower data throughput hurt the video performance and curbed functionality.
Although you can record live TV programming, the USB port's bandwidth limitations won't let you pause live television (also called time shifting), which is a popular feature of standard digital video recorders. And on several occasions sound and video appeared to be slightly out of sync when I used Microsoft's Word for Windows and Internet Explorer at the same time.
Also, you can save files only as AVI files. Pricier versions of ATI software support the MPEG-2 encoding standard, which can make the same files nearly two-thirds smaller, saving serious space on your hard drive.
While you can view video at any resolution size, you can capture video only at 352 by 240 (that's about a 3-by-4-inch window). At that size, 1 hour of programming at the preferred 30 frames per second requires about 1GB of hard drive space.
Other Options
Of course, the TV Wonder USB is only one among many USB-based TV tuner cards. For example, Pinnacle Systems Studio offers the $90 PCTV USB (which PCWorld.com reviewed in May 2000). And IRez Technologies offers the $100 USB TV. Both products also ship with a FM tuner and basic video-editing software.
Another USB unit with a nice extra is Avermedia Technologies' $100 AverTV USB, which supports all 181 cable channels (versus the Wonder's 125). And for Apple fans, Eskape Labs offers the $180 MyTV USB TV Tuner, which works with iMacs and G3s. (ATI has a Mac version of TV Wonder for USB, priced at $100.)
In the end, despite all the other options out there and the problems I encountered, I'd still recommend the TV Wonder USB--for some users. If you're looking for simple, inexpensive TV viewing on your PC, it's a good product. If you're a more sophisticated user interested in capturing high quality video--and you're looking for a genuine alternative to TiVo--forget it.