ATi TV Wonder VE

[Xaeron]

I've been wanting a TV capture card for a while now, and I was out at my local Wal-Mart and saw a TV Wonder VE for 44 dollars. I was looking at its specs and it says that it isn't stereo. Does this mean that it'll only come out of one of my computer speakers, or will it be dubbed through the other too? Also I didn't notice an out on it. I still want to run it to my TV. I guess I could always buy a splitter but I won't if it isn't necessary. Just what are your overall opinions on this? I'm wary of the VE part.

[gtsimmo]

Ah my buddy just got one the other day. One the TV image quality is good and it's also good to capture images. However, using it to capture or record a clip will produce some pretty bad image quality. The card is mono, which means you will still get sound from your speaker, but it's not stearo. In other word, there isn't a seperate left and right audio channel, just one audo channel played on both channel. Not a serious issue as i dont think your buying a $44 tv card for stearo sound.

Oh if you still want to watch tv yes you are gonna require a line splitter but that could be had for couple of bucks at any electronic store. Overall it's a good card considering the price

[Xaeron]

heh.. I don't really need one, but I've always been in awe of watching TV on my computer. I also wanted to use the record feature to make a VCD collection of my favorite TV shows... I don't know what to think now that you said the image quality on recorded files isn't that good...

[gtsimmo]

Alot of the higher end cards cost 100+ dollars and im sure they have better quality but what can you expect from the Value Edition card?

[Xaeron]

Yeah, but I'm not gonna go spend 100 dollars on something I don't really need. Like I said, I was just in awe of watching/recording live television on my computer and when I saw it was that cheap I almost bought it. I have a TV sitting about 3 or 4 feet to my right, but it's such a pain turning my head 90 degrees to watch television while using the computer :D

[h2k]

you can get stereo sound by using an old vcr to connect to the composite in on the tv card. Then you just get a splitter and hook it to line in on your sound card and you have stereo. I usually get a better signal with the vcr than the onboard tuner too!

[Xaeron]

Well I think i'm gonna pass on it anyway. I'll put my money to better use.

[parkan]

The card has mighty issues with WinXP if you use that, in the best ATI "we don't update the drivers till a Dell's CPU freezes over" tradition. I have the full (stereo and higher resolution) version and it is OK under linux, I record my star trek voyager into divx every night.

[h2k]

Originally posted by parkan
The card has mighty issues with WinXP if you use that, in the best ATI "we don't update the drivers till a Dell's CPU freezes over" tradition. I have the full (stereo and higher resolution) version and it is OK under linux, I record my star trek voyager into divx every night.

The drivers off the cd worked fine on my brother's setup with XP.

[parkan]

Originally posted by h2k


The drivers off the cd worked fine on my brother's setup with XP.

He got lucky then. I get sound problems and scrambled image in WinXP (using thier own multimedia center app).

[SBeaver]

I had the TV-wonder (standard one with stereo) version but it didn't work at all so I got another card.
The XP drivers are bad and that's what ATI support told me (yes they seem to be able to answear oly it took a month and I had allready changed card.)
They sent me instructions that were supposed to fix this driver issue but who cares now? they stopped supporting their TV cards in the latest versions of media centre and they have not done ANYTHING about their drivers/software for TV-cards since May 2001!

[Xaeron]

I think i'll just go out and buy some dvds for my new tv that is supposed to arrive on wednesday...

[gtsimmo]

Umm upon talking to my friend again, i found out that there was some misunderstanding. Yes the Image quality is okay but when he told me that the capture feature sucked, i thought he meant the image quality. It turns out that it saves the file as a mp2 format which the ATI software cant play back!!! So if you got something that will play back mp2 video files it's worth a try.

[daddyof2]

i have the same card. The capture image quality is not only mpg2. It will also capture an avi clip. It uses the mpg2 as a default but it can be changed. The avi clips use a lot more of your hard drive though. There are several quality settings to choose from. I paid 40 bucks for my card, overall it was a decent purchase since I wanted to watch tv and occasionly put one of my home videos on the pc to edit and put back on the tape. It has served that purpose.

[gtsimmo]

Thanks for the clarification Daddyof2. I was going by what my friend has told me. Go figure he didnt bother going through all the options. :D