ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB PC TV Tuner

5 comments

1. 

   Jose Varela on December 21, 2009 at 8:59 pm

   Good, it installs it in Vista Windows and I could install it fast, although it was not so easy.
   

2. 

   Michele Knight on December 21, 2009 at 10:24 pm

   This was an absolutely awful product!! Steer clear. I bought this TV tuner for its cable TV recording capabilities, and to archive old VHS tapes on DVD. This product is truly horrible, and is clear evidence that you get what you pay for. I am a “techie”, and my career is in the tech business. After reading through the poorly formatted directions, I attempted to install the drivers without installing the software. When this did not work, I installed the software.

   The software is outdated, buggy, and contains drivers that don’t play very “well” with vista. After finally getting the buggy software to install,there were many instances when I attempted to do a recording where ATI’s interface froze. I tried to continue to use the errant program, but after it crashed and caused the first blue screen I’ve ever seen on my laptop in nearly one year of use, I decided to just go ahead and try using it through windows media center.

   FINALLY I was able to configure the tuner so that it worked to spec. However the sound and video quality were just average, and depending on the source, poor. I am highly dissatisfied with this tuner, and after having used it for one day, am going to return it to amazon. In over 10 years of shopping on Amazon, this is the ONLY PURCHASE I AM ATTEMPTING TO RETURN.

   I plan to return this god awful tuner, and get the brand that is certified for my HP laptop.

   Bottom line, buggy software, drivers, and interface make a product that could be mediocre downright lousy.

   STAY AWAY.

   I will never buy another product from ATI. PLEASE DON’T LEARN THE HARD WAY AS I DID. Avoid at all costs!!

3. 

   Wood Doc on December 21, 2009 at 11:43 pm

   The TV tuner USB drivers were difficult to install and required several long visits to the internet. When I got it set up it corrupted my sound card drivers to where even reloading the windows drivers was fruitless. I could receive the TV images but the speakers had to be turned off to eliminate a horrific screech. I had to format and reload all my software to clear up the problem.

4. 

   H. S. Pope on December 22, 2009 at 2:27 am

   I purchase this product last month and have used it a few times with only mediocre results.

   The first thing I used it for was to capture some video from my DirecTV DVR. The picture quality was not that great and the recording kept freezing. There were multiple times when I would go back to my computer to check the status and I would realize that the recording had been frozen for 30+mins. I’m running a 2.0Ghz duo-core processor and had more freezing on this computer than with my Pentium 4 (1.2Ghz) and the old TV Wonder VE.

   Finally, it claims to get an HD signal, but this model is not capable of decoding the HD signals that are sometimes broadcast over basic cable lines. You will need one of the higher-end ATI models if you are hoping for that. You can only get HD signals over-the-air that can be captured with the antenna provided. I haven’t tried the antenna though.

5. 

   Kenneth R. Muse on December 22, 2009 at 4:06 am

   Several different computers and operating systems, same results — great video quality but non-functional video capture and absolutely no manufacturer support. Unless you are very technically inclined and don’t mind that you might have to spend a lot of time troubleshooting, this card is probably not for you.

   In general, it took several attempts to install it, even using the newer drivers and software on the web site. In many cases, something would fail to install correctly, so you uninstall and attempt to install it again. Eventually, it does install. A symptom of this problem is the dreaded “no device found” message. Once it does install correctly, the video is crisp and clear. It seems to work more reliably on Windows XP (32-bit) than Windows Vista (and esp. Vista x64), but that isn’t really saying much. The experiences on all platforms were very similar.
   
   The software package has numerous defects that limit the usefulness. The electronic program guide rarely works and on more than one occasion, the name of the channel and the actual channel have gotten out of sync. If you get the channels to download even once — avoid touching the EPG controls again. Just because it downloads the setup information correctly the first time doesn’t mean it will everytime. If you can’t get the download portion of the setup to work, just keep trying … eventually it will connect. Rather than display the conventional numbers for digital channels that you would expect (such as 2-1, 5-1, 5-2), you get the call letters and a simple channel number. The video capture works great — as long as you don’t play it back. Clips over about 60 seconds start to drift out of sync; by 15 minutes into the program, the audio has drifted noticeably. Definitely recommend NOT touching the choice of codec … the dedfault setup will at least capture video and audio. Several of the other selections did to not fare as well. Burning to discs — the installer failed to install this component numerous times. When it is installed, works great if you can tolerate the video capture problem. Final issue — the applications are not signed and require you to deal with UAC and permission escalation EVERY time you use the program. If you use the Windows security features, the automatic recording functionality will never be able to launch. It also requires admin perissions and a UAC prompt.

   The driver tends to fail and lead to the dread blue screen of death (even on Vista!) frequently. This problem seems to be aggrevated by dual monitor setups (on dual monitor setups, the app can refuse to load or only show a blank black video screen). To avoid this, try not to change channels too rapidly. The video driver seems to have some serious stability issues. Just before the crash, the audio will start to “hiccup” in most cases or the video will stop displaying. The application will become unresponsive and then everything will go blue.

   If you can tolerate the other issues, the system is somewhat workable. Be aware, however, that in my attempts to contact ATI/AMD support, I have manaaged to only get one response. The one resposne I received was very short and stated that since they licensed most of the software from third parties, they were forwarding my issues on to people that were more knowledgeable. After that, no further responses. It is my experience that they don’t support this product at all.

   Final note — with Nero Live installed, the experiences so far are a bit better. Unfortunately, Nero Live does not yet fully support this video card, so only about 1/3 of the channels it picked up were decoded correctly and viewable. Each release seems to get better, so there is the chance that this card may eventually work for those users. Other software packages might be even more usable with this card.
   
   The quality of the card itself is amazing. Great video, solid audio clarity, and doesn’t get very hot. Antenna seems to work very well, despite the small size. It is unfortunate that so little quality exists on the software side. With a working software solution and a reocrding component that doesn’t get out of sync, this would be a great investment. As it is, however, it does not live up to what it claims to offer.