Product Description

Turn your PC into an intelligent television! ATI-TV is the best way to get television and video into your PC and will change the way you watch TV forever. You'll be able to enable Web TV for Windows, zoom in the action, capture video from television shows or your camcorder, watch PC video clips and still enjoy fast graphics. Even better, ATI-TV will watch television for you, unattended!With the ATI-TV tuner board you can experience Web TV's interactive TV programming right on your desktop PC by receiving and displaying TV signal and other broadcast data over the web. Program your favorite shows, find out interesting TV facts and get instant tuning to TV shows. Watch TV silently on your PC by reading the closed captioning text. Plus, scroll back in the closed captioning, up to five minutes worth, to catch anything you missed during a break. Run TV in the background and use the 'Hot Words' feature to signal you when the specified 'Hot Word' is detected in a program's closed captioning. Even instruct your PC to record program transcripts - a great tool for journalists, stock watchers, researchers and students. Imagine recording documentaries or step-by-step instructions for building projects from a home improvement show or that tantalizing recipe from your favorite cooking show. ATI-TV scans through all available stations in seconds, letting you see 'what's on' at a glance. A mouse click takes you to the program that catches your eye.

Product Details

• Brand: ATI
• Model: 100703102
• Dimensions: 2.00 pounds

Features

• Watch TV on your PC
• Get interactive TV listings with no monthly fee
• Capture motion video and still images
• Schedule and record TV programs
• Video Desktop included--display live TV signal as video wallpaper

Amazon.com Product Description
ATI's TV Wonder VE allows you to watch TV on your PC. Simply install the TV Wonder VE, plug into an antenna or cable jack, and you can surf up to 125 television channels in a window or full screen while you work in other applications.

Included is the ATI Multimedia Center, which enables many advanced features like Channel Preview, which lets you scan through all available stations in seconds, see "what's on" at a glance, and Video Desktop, which lets you display a live TV signal as video wallpaper.

With an Internet connection, you'll have access to GUIDE Plus+ Interactive Program Guide (North America only). Scroll through TV listings while watching the current channel in a window. Search and schedule programs for viewing or recording by title, category (e.g., golf, comedies, drama), actor/performer, or date. You get all this for no monthly fee.

With the TV Wonder VE, you'll be able to digitally record any TV program. Set the time and channel of any program you want to watch and you will be notified when it comes on, or you can have the TV Wonder VE digital VCR record the program to your hard drive so you can watch it later.

The TV Wonder VE is compatible with all graphics sub-systems supporting DirectX overlay, including products from 3Dfx and nVidia.

Customer Reviews

Works great. Setup a little difficult.
I just got this card from the local Best Buy and I have to admit it is an absolute miracle once you get it to work. I have DirecTV and I wanted a TV tuner so I can watch basketball while I work on the computer or browse the net.

Words of Caution: The TV tuner has only 125 channels and works only with an antenna or you local cable. The TV tuner does NOT work with satellite TV (or digital TV). So I ended up having to buy an additional satellite receiver and then hook up the receiver to the card. The downside to this is that you can't use all of the video scheduling and recording capabilities of the card. The card does give you some very nice TIVO functionalities, but again you can only use them on your local cable or antenna. Once you go through a receiver, you have to select the channels via the receiver while the ATI-TV tuner stays in Channel 3.

Setup: Setup was a little dificult. I have a Vaio with 866 Pentium III, with Intel Graphics Card, running Windows 2000. First you have to upgrade your Windows 2000 to DirecX 8.0 (the one that comes with Windows 2000 is DirecX 7.1). You do that by visiting a special site provided by Microsoft. You download the new upgrade and then install it. I believe if you don't upgrade to DirecX 8.0, you might experience a ton of problems (by the way WinXP comes with DirecX 8.0 installed). Then you have to download the Windows 2000 drivers and TV tuner software from the ATI site, because the CD in the box provides you with drivers for the Win 98 operating system and prior. And then you have to go through the Plug-n-Play wizards and install 4 different ATI drivers. And then you are ready to go.

In Action: Once you get setup the card is fabulous. The picture is great. Especially in the smaller views. The running of the tv picture doesn't interfere with any of your other computer activities. Basically, the cable TV signal goes through the card and onto your monitor like a TV - it doesn't require any system resources at all which is key. You get to go about your business as if you don't have a little TV screen in the lower right hand corner. You can open up a ton of applications and there is no deterioriation in performance. The interface (ATI Media Center) has kind of outdated graphic look and I wish I could put a different skin and I am not sure ATI provides that. You can also expand to full screen view. Just remember to look from far away as you would with a TV. If you look from close up, the picture is grainy. But if you look from say 4 or 5 feet you won't notice a difference. In fact, the picture might be superior to that of your TV.

So right now, I am really loving this card. I can watch TV while I work or if my roomate has taken the TV in the living room, I can watch TV in my room and avoid any stupid little confilcts. It truly has made my life a notch easier. I definitely recommend it to anyone who will be able to overcome the initial setup hassles.

Great Product!
I bought this and it took about 10 minutes to install. I am running an XP machine and you need to download the XP Drivers from ATI's site. Don't even bother with the enclosed CD, everything is in the XP download. The picture is wonderful. I can input video from my analog camcorder and record with DVD quality. AND all the software I use that has a capture option, recognizes the card. I spent [money] on USB Instant DVD and can only use the few apps that come with it. ATI WONDER TV is a Great Product...

Maximize TV watching resolution
Hello guys. Sorry for my english, my native language is spanish.
Well, I bought my ATI TV WONDER VE card two months ago. I have a Celeron 850 mhz, absolutely all integrated, but I have no problems during card installation.
The card works very well, but my big disillusion is the poor resolution for video capturing (320 x 240 in MPEG1 compression). Also, TV watching resolution is the same (320 x 240), so the image is not so good when you use full screen mode, but it is acceptable.
I looked in the ATI website for a way to increase resolution, and I found that many other users have the same restlessness. ATI's answer is that the resolution is limited by software, not hardware.
That makes me "click". So, I load other TV watching program in my computer, the Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.0, and after several minutes configuring it, I could see a sharp and clean TV image with a resolution of 640 x 480 (Ulead's limit). Nevertheless, video capturing with this Ulead software is very bad, so when I need to capture video I use ATI video capturing software.
So, the card is a good option, but for increasing the resolution all you have to do is use other TV watching software...