Is it just me or is the PCI TV Wonder Pro a piece of junk!

[nobody]

I own a couple of ATI All in Wonder cards and even a couple of TV
Wonder PCI cards. They have worked out well.

But when i built a media box using a P4 3.0 Ghz 800 Mhz processor and
a Matrox G450 Dual head video card I decided to get the new TV Wonder
Pro to handle TV recordings.

At first I stuck the TV Wonder PRO in a old Cel 1.1 Ghz box. But it
had audio problems. Half the channels didn't show up as stereo. I
called ATI and they told me to RMA the card but when I did a search on
the ATI side I came up with this....

http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/3959.html
ATI Multimedia Center 7.1 - Stereo sound not available when using an
ATI-TV WONDER

my exact problem only I was using a TV Wonder Pro instead of a TV
Wonder. And I was using MMC 8.2 which came with the card instead of
7.1. So I figure this must be a driver problem.

I have found a kind of work around where as if I enable >>> Sound >>
Both >> then stereo becomes Un-greyed and I can enable it.... until I
change channels at which time it goes back to the same problem.

But this was only the beginning, when I moved the card to the new P4 I
have all sorts of problems, including that one.

P4 3.0 Ghz 800Mhz
Intel D865PERL ... rock solid board
1 GB of Crucial DDR 3200
Matrox G450 Dual head
Western Digital J series 200 GB 7200 RPM hard drive
Lite on DVD burnner.
Toshiba SCSI CDR

On the P4 the audio / video seems to be delayed compared to my other
TV turners and when I try to record I get the Out of Sync problem as
described in

http://mirror.ati.com/support/infobase/4275.html

In fact attempting to record leads to problems that require a reboot
to sort out. And this is occurs regardless of whether or not I have
Hyperthreading enabled or not or if I boot into Windows 2000 PRO or
Windows XP Pro.

Picture quality isn't very impressive either, and audio is poor on a
lot of channels unless I do the little trick to enable stereo but
even then there is something wrong with it.

I don't understand why this card was ever released. I imagine that
eventually these problems will be solved and I will have to send it in
for a new card, but for now I need to buy a PCI or USB2 TV card that
actually works like it is suppose to. Anybody have any
recommendations?

 

[Rob G]

I bought one a while ago and returned it. I must be a glutton for
punishment
because I bought one again today. The biggest problem with the ATI cards
is incompatability issues with the MMC software and Audigy soundcards.
You didn't say what type of audio card you are using, but I am using an
Audigy2 myself. I was using MMC 7.9 with a TV Wonder PCI and it worked
really well. Now I switched to 8.2 and the TV Wonder Pro. It works ok, but
if I try to record with the high quality picture enabled I get audio echoes.
Actually
it sounds like an echo, but it's 2 audio streams playing at the same time
and one
of them is delayed. There's also another problem where the audio
initialization
wizard crashes if you try to run it again (there is a work around for this,
involves
a quick registry edit). MMC8.8 is even worse as I cannot record without the
dreaded audio echo problem.

It's completely obvious that MMC was NEVER tested on Audigy soundcards.
The programmers must have a 'hate on' for creative labs because it seems
they have
never tried to resolve the compatability issues that have been around for a
very
long time.

I'm going to use the MMC for recording only and find another program for
viewing
TV.

 

[Hugh G Bear]

You can get around the problem easily by enabling onboard sound if you have
it. I did that on my system and amazingly everything now works as it's
supposed to. Do a complete uninstall of the TV Wonder before enabling the
onboard, then when you reinstall tell the wizard to use the onboard for
sound. Even the mute on scheduled record works now. No more phone calls at
work telling me my computer woke everyone up. I'm also using best video
quality which was previously unavailable if I wanted to do scheduled record.

I bought one a while ago and returned it. I must be a glutton for
punishment
because I bought one again today. The biggest problem with the ATI cards
is incompatability issues with the MMC software and Audigy soundcards.
You didn't say what type of audio card you are using, but I am using an
Audigy2 myself. I was using MMC 7.9 with a TV Wonder PCI and it worked
really well. Now I switched to 8.2 and the TV Wonder Pro. It works ok, but
if I try to record with the high quality picture enabled I get audio

echoes.

 

[Ed]

Try recording with a different quality level. I'd get the echo effect at
high quality mpeg2 recording,but not at medium quality.
I also experienced some sync problems
After a clean install of WinXP,I was able to record at all settings with no
problem,
and no more sync problems either.

It's a drag to clean install but you have to consider it when adding new
hardware.
I make a Norton Ghost image of a clean windows install before installing
drivers. If there's ever a problem,it only takes 2 minutes instead of a
lengthy install.