ATI HDTV Wonder Screencaps

[OWA]

While the ATI HDTV Wonder annoys the heck out of me at times, when it works, it works pretty well. I just got it working more consistently recently. So, here are a few screenshots of various TV shows that look pretty good on my LCDs. It's amazing that you get this kind of picture over the air from what more or less is a pair of rabbit ears (doesn't really look like rabbit ears but it's a very small indoor antenna).

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/2705/wtkrdtfeb020154nq.th.jpg (http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wtkrdtfeb020154nq.jpg) http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/5952/erfeb023bv.th.jpg (http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=erfeb023bv.jpg) http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/8228/wavyhdjan300543or.th.jpg (http://img133.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wavyhdjan300543or.jpg)

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/386/wavydthighdefinitionfeb020151s.th.jpg (http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wavydthighdefinitionfeb020151s.jpg) http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/3028/wavyhdnov198gn.th.jpg (http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wavyhdnov198gn.jpg) http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/7787/wavyhdfeb020029tp.th.jpg (http://img334.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wavyhdfeb020029tp.jpg)

[MikeC]

Nice! I was beginning to think you only liked brunetts until I saw the blonde. :)

[Sazar]

Nice. Now if only my ****ing remote control drivers would work.

[OWA]

Nice! I was beginning to think you only liked brunetts until I saw the blonde. :)
I almost didn't post the one of Jaime Pressly, since it wasn't the greatest shot of her, but I was trying to provide something for everyone. :) j/k

[Sazar]

I liked her better when she a little more meat on the bones :drooling:

[Riptide]

Wait when did they come out with an HDTV version? I'm all behind the times I think. lol

Now that I have a 37" LCD maybe I should get me one of these things. So you can actually capture video with this to your disc? In 1080p?

[OWA]

How about how she looked in Poison Ivy 3? :)

[Sazar]

Thats what I was referring to :cool:

[OWA]

Wait when did they come out with an HDTV version? I'm all behind the times I think. lol

Now that I have a 37" LCD maybe I should get me one of these things. So you can actually capture video with this to your disc? In 1080p?

It came out maybe a year ago or so. Seems like I've had it for about a year and I got it as soon as they were available locally.

Yeah, you can record also. I've had a lot of issues with that (instability issues) so I haven't tried it a lot. Things are getting a little better now though and I'm hoping the X2 CPU that should be here tomorrow will help out some also.

[Riptide]

Oh so it crashes sometimes when you go to record? I see...

Couple questions. Will it record in 1080p and if so how much disc space does an hour chew up? What sorta compression does it use?

[OWA]

Yeah, initially I had visions of using it as a PVR but I quickly gave up on it. More than once I went to check on the recording only to find that the MMC had crashed. I was able to record a UNC b-ball game recently and it made it through that fine. Things seem more stable at the moment so hopefully I'll get a chance to try more of that now. Also, I've mostly tried to record analog TV so far since most of time what I've wanted to record was on cable. I'll try recording something in HD now to see how that goes.

So basically, to answer your questions, I'll have to play with it some and read some of the help to be sure. It has various modes (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc.) but most of the resolutions for exporting are DVD type resolutions like 720x480 or lower. There is a native mode so I need to see if I get 1920x1080 when using that to record HD programs. The disk space used, of course, depends on the modes you choose. Some can eat up the disk space pretty quickly. It basically tells you how long you'll be able to record for and how much disk space it'll take when you choose your preset. I have tried recording directly to a DVD format but the CPU couldn't handle the load. I'll see if the X2 helps with that.

Edit: The one kind of gotcha is that the HD programs can only be received by over the air antennas. If you had cable that delivered HD content for example, I don't think it works with the HDTV Wonder.

Edit 2: Just in case you're wondering, I get about 20 channels over the HD tuner during the day and around 25 or so at night. Not real sure why that is. Out of the 20, there are some duplicates. Like I get ABC SD and ABC HD, and some of the main stations have 3 channels so you might have NBC SD, NBC HD and NBC Wx (weather radar most of the time). Some times they show the same thing, just one is standard def and one is high def but during the olympics, for example, both were HD content. One channel showed the more popular events like diving non-stop while the other one showed what was on the regular broadcast (but it was still in HD). The station used the wrong mode most of the time though so a lot of the motion would turn the display into a pixelated mess. They were using 1080i instead of 720p. It upset a lot of people.

[OWA]

I recorded a few minutes of Conan O'Brien in HD and the size was around 570 meg. I then played back the recording and took a screenshot of the recording. I'm not sure if it's truly HD or not. I'll need to read some I guess to know for sure. Here is the screenshot. I'm not sure if it's 1920x1200 b/c I was playing it back fullscreen on my Dell LCD or what. The playback looked pretty good. Maybe not quite as good as the original broadcast but it seemed pretty close. But then again, DVDs look pretty good also and the res is much lower than HD.

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/8044/latenightwithconanobrienfeb03v.th.jpg (http://img505.imageshack.us/my.php?image=latenightwithconanobrienfeb03v.jpg)

[Son Goku]

Pretty decent IQ, for having used an antenna... Guess you live in a city or something then, where the transmitters aren't too far away. Whee my parents retired, and until cable came to the locale there, well the hills had a tendency to get in the way :rofl

BTW, as to having lost connection, I do wonder... The usual source for some of the Stargate downloads well, didn't do it last week, and the person who did. People were mentioning that "well it's viewable, but clearly not a professional job. There are places where the signal drops out and..." Hmm... Not sure what they used to record it on their comp however... I quickly downloaded from elsewhere after the descrip from other users :eek:

If it only works with HD content over the air though, that would be a major limiting factor however. And one, that people with digital cable already, might prefer if it didn't have. Perhaps in an upgraded version, they might get that sorted out. Perhaps...

[sharangad]

The playback looked pretty good. Maybe not quite as good as the original broadcast but it seemed pretty close.


I was under the impression that the HDTV wonder captured the broadcast HD MPEG-2 streams instead of actually decoding and recompressing them.

Digital TV broadcasts in Europe use DVB-T or DVB-S and cards which can capture this don't do any recompression. They simply capture the raw feed (MPEG-2 HD TS).

'tis the actual playback of HD streams which poses a problem.

[Riptide]

Yeah I assume this thing doesn't come with an antenna yes? I've heard they can be rather pricey, good ones up to $100 or so. In my area we only get 3 HD stations (lol) but since I have no cable or satellite service for TV I would still be gaining quality, just not quantity.

You can buy capture cards here in the US that will capture the HD streams into .TS files. I shopped around for one a while back but it wasn't cheap. $350+.

[OWA]

It comes with an antenna. The box the HDTV Wonder comes in is really weird shaped because of that. The antenna is actually supposed to be pretty good but if you're way out there, you might want an outside antenna or larger one.

Sharangad, Riptide and others, I'm just not sure on the recording. When I initially was playing with all of that, I had stability issues so I didn't pursue it for long. So, I don't really know that much about that aspect of it. I'll need to do some reading and playing around with it to really know for sure. It might be safer to find a review of it to find out about that aspect. I'm very much a beginner in that regard.

Son Goku, yeah, that is one of the main drawbacks with over the air signals. If the signal level bounces around a lot, the picture will sometimes stutter (freeze for a second). If the signal is really poor, it's a lot like DirectTV where you might lose the signal (complete loss of picture) for a second. Most of the the major stations like ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox my signal strength is in the lower-to-mid 80s. They rarely stutter but I doubt I'd be able to record an hour show without having at least one stutter. At first, this greatly annoyed me but you kind of get use to it and don't notice the occasional stutter as much after a while. Anyawy, stations like WB and UPN are normally in the 70s but they will more frequently drop to the 60s and that abrupt signal level change seems to cause a few more stutters. Not unwatchable by any means but enough to be annoying at times.

That reminds me of yet another drawback to over the air channels. Everything depends on the direction of the antenna so ideally you'd want to be able to adjust that or else you have to find the best direction that accommodates the most channels you're interested in. A lot of times the channels you're interested in need the antenna to point in different directions. I'm really lucky in that sense. I've found one location that gets me all the major stations with excellent signal strength and the minor stations with fairly good signal strength. So, I rarely adjust my antenna.

I think one of the main requests that I saw when I first got it was that people wanted some way to use it with cable to get receive the HD content that way. Currently, unless they've changed things recently, there's no way to do that. You have to receive the HD content by antenna.

I guess the shortcomings make it more of a novelty than an ideal solution for HD content. It was still a relatively inexpensive way of getting access to HD content though. I bought mine sometime before the Olympics mainly just so I could watch the Olympics in HD. It was spend $200 (or whatever it was, I don't remember the price now) or spend a few thousand for a real HDTV.

Also, it's still pretty cool to see on high res screens and the difference is very dramatic. I'll frequently have my 32" Sony (standard TV, using analog cable) and the HDTV Wonder showing the same sporting event and there is a huge WOW factor. It's not an ideal solution but it is still impressive.

[OWA]

Here is what the antenna looks like. At first I only had the antenna in the picture but then I figured you wouldn't know how big it was. So, I put the remote that comes with it under the antenna to give you some idea of how small the antenna actually is. It works surprisingly well.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8844/hdtvantennacrop2ar.th.jpg (http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdtvantennacrop2ar.jpg) http://img333.imageshack.us/img333/6401/hdtvantennacrop29fd.th.jpg (http://img333.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdtvantennacrop29fd.jpg)

Edit: Also, there are sites that will tell you what channels are available in your area and what kind of antenna you'll need to get them (depending on your surroundings, etc.). They also tell you what direction to point your antenna. I didn't bother with that. It was pretty easy doing it by trial and error.

[Riptide]

I have the real HDTV this just allows me to basically get by without having to spend a ton on a tuner. And it can capture. :)

I think I might wait a while though and see if the bugs get worked out and also if it ends up being able to accept other sources for the signal. But yes as a cheap solution it seems worthwhile.

I would prefer to get it at BB locally though so I could return it if the reception sucks. We only have 3 stations here that broadcast in HD and if they all sucked and stuttered left and right - no way do I want it.

BTW thanks for the pictures and the mini review. Very helpful.

[OWA]

No problem. I think I got mine at the local CompUSA althogh it might have been BB. I've seen it at both, at least initially. I haven't checked in a while though.

[Riptide]

Yeah unless Office Depot or BB has it I'm hosed. I live in the middle of noowhere and even our BB is significantly smaller than the ones in say CA for instance.

The internet is practically the only place I can get damn near anything except software. And even then, OEM has to be bought via internet. Yeah it sucks. ;)

[DiscipleDOC]

Yeah unless Office Depot or BB has it I'm hosed. I live in the middle of noowhere and even our BB is significantly smaller than the ones in say CA for instance.

The internet is practically the only place I can get damn near anything except software. And even then, OEM has to be bought via internet. Yeah it sucks. ;)
Best Buy do carry the ATI HDTV. I started to pick one up a month ago.

[Sazar]

I am going to be watching the super bowl downtown with some buddies, one of whom bought an hd-tv tuner and is going to connect it to his projector :cool:

It looks gorgeous for regular stuff so it should look pretty damn spiffy for the bowl.

[Sazar]

Here is what the antenna looks like. At first I only had the antenna in the picture but then I figured you wouldn't know how big it was. So, I put the remote that comes with it under the antenna to give you some idea of how small the antenna actually is. It works surprisingly well.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8844/hdtvantennacrop2ar.th.jpg (http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdtvantennacrop2ar.jpg) http://img333.imageshack.us/img333/6401/hdtvantennacrop29fd.th.jpg (http://img333.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdtvantennacrop29fd.jpg)

Edit: Also, there are sites that will tell you what channels are available in your area and what kind of antenna you'll need to get them (depending on your surroundings, etc.). They also tell you what direction to point your antenna. I didn't bother with that. It was pretty easy doing it by trial and error.

Is that the remote wonder plus?

You have to try and get your mitts on the remote wonder II. Personally I think its teh best of the lot. If only the dang drivers with ver 3.03 would work properly :(

[Riptide]

This thing is hard to find in stock.
Best Buy do carry the ATI HDTV. I started to pick one up a month ago.
Out of stock on their website and no instore pickup available. :(

[Son Goku]

That reminds me of yet another drawback to over the air channels. Everything depends on the direction of the antenna so ideally you'd want to be able to adjust that or else you have to find the best direction that accommodates the most channels you're interested in. A lot of times the channels you're interested in need the antenna to point in different directions. I'm really lucky in that sense. I've found one location that gets me all the major stations with excellent signal strength and the minor stations with fairly good signal strength. So, I rarely adjust my antenna.

Yeah, and where my parents retired, I knew someone who had a mountain (well they call them mountains back East, we'd call them foot hills in the south west :D ) that stood on 3 sides of her house. With the reception blocked from all 3 sides, she only ever did get 1 channel over standard TV using an antenna. Kinda bad when one's down to 1 channel, and the reception on that is poor :eek:

Yeah unless Office Depot or BB has it I'm hosed. I live in the middle of noowhere and even our BB is significantly smaller than the ones in say CA for instance.

I hear you, up where my parents retired (in Maine), we only had Wal-Mart close by (about 15-20 miles away). And I don't have to tell people that the selection at Wal-Mart kinda sucks. The nearest mall (which had an Electronics Botique) was about 60 miles away...