ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 - TV recording that finally works
Recording TV content at home has been on my priority list ever since getting the new TV. The options are numerous, and all come with a set of advantages and disadvantages. Buying a Tivo is one of the most mainstream choices out there, but series 3 seems just so unjustified in price, and series 2 is headed towards obsolescence with series 3 breathing heavily at its back. Plus there are all the subscription fees.
Renting DVR from the cable company seems to be a valid option, they only want $5 a month for it, but then you got to upgrade to their digital cable as well, and after all is done, you’re probably looking at triple of the bill and the same amount of channels you enjoy watching.
Getting a portable video recorder like Archos made sense at some point, but after discovering its lack of support for coax cable input (that’s the cable that the cable company provides you with), the thing was sent back to Amazon. Getting a PCI DVR card also seemed to be an option, but there’s always that fear that after tinkering with it and all the card won’t work, and at this point will not be returnable due to open shrinkwrap.
So when Circuit City had a sale on ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0, I jumped in. For $40 after rebates the price was definitely in a better range than $800 TiVo Series 3, and $400 Archos AV 700. The unit quite clearly featured the coax input, composite input/output (in case you still want to plug in your TV), USB 2.0 port for the PC and the power plug. The installation CD came with roughly 8 required applications that needed to be installed, and somehow my PC kept freezing on the Microsoft Direct X installs. Figuring that it’s always I can get later from Microsoft, I unchecked the check boxes on the installation screen, and after abou third attempt the installation went through. Couple of reboots, and the installed TV guide comes up and scans your cable input for the channels you have. Mine were all correctly identified, and overall getting the TV on the screen was no problem at all.
The TV quality is a bit grainy on a 24″ screen, but overall is quite acceptable. The scheduler is dead simple - the application looks at the local time on your PC, and you can tell it (a) which channel to record, (b) when to start recording, (c) when to stop recording and (d) how frequently repeat the process in case you’re recording your favorite show. The output supports WMV, AVI, MPEG, MPEG4 and something called ATI DVR format. If you have a DVD burner available, you can even specify the output to go to DVD directly.
Remains to be seen how I like the little TV tuner / DVR box after several days/weeks of usage, but so far I am quite impressed with what ATI delivers for mere 40 bucks.
September 23rd, 2006 at 5:08 pm #Jeff Boulter
Build a MythTV box. Not only is it full featured and free, it will keep you entertained for months - not watching it, but installing drivers and trying to get it configured the way you want! MythTV is a great way to fill up you free time and possibly learn something at the same time.
September 24th, 2006 at 1:42 pm #Alex
Yeah, it’s the “entertained for months” that I was kinda dubious about. On one hand, yeah, having complete control would be awesome, and getting a dedicated box just for MythTV would be a great experience. On the other, I just wanted to have something cheap and fast as currently with 1 TV per household there’s always a question of what to watch, when Fox has the “4 fathers of comedy” and ABC runs “Amazing Race”, which my wife is a fan of.