To compare with the Hauppauge, I recorded a news program at the same time with both cards and using the same cable line. From a naked eye perspective and taking account color, motion, and clarity, the picture quality between the two was very comparable. With an upclose capture of each picture, I found the two to be similiar with both producing great quality. The
TV Wonder Elite does seem to have edges that are a little softer than the Hauppauge card. Of the two pictures, I liked them both and found that it was hard to tell when you output them to the TV which is which.
Plugging the Remote Wonder Plus in, I was navigating through
BeyondTV’s interface without any adjustments to the program. I was a little surprised that it worked without any hitches and was very happy I could use the included remote with the program. The thin profile remote didn’t show any lag between the time of pressing the command and having the function initiated. It’s also a very comfortable remote to hold with good feel on the buttons and everything labeled very clearly.
This card’s being marketed at being a great Windows XP Media Center Edition card. With that in mind, I installed my copy of the OS onto the machine. With a clean setup, I walked through the installation wizard and I was watching TV with the card. Picture quality was almost the same as with
BeyondTV. With the included radio tuner, I had no problems listening to my local stations with Media Center. The included antennae picked up most of the signals successfully. Changing channels seemed to take the same amount of time for the
TV Wonder Elite as it did for the Hauppauge card. There’s a slight delay, perhaps a second or a second and a half, before the channel changes.
Recording with both programs had the CPU usage sitting at around 8-12%, which is what I expected from a hardware MPEG-2 encoding capable card. You should be able to pop a few of these in a
BeyondTV or
SageTV server and record many stations at once without worrying about load on the CPU. We don’t have two cards in the labs just yet but we’ll try to get one paired up soon and also we’ll do a quick update on how the card will behave with a Hauppauge in there as well working in tandem.
If you don’t have a DVR program, the Cyberlink product isn’t too shabby. It has plenty of features such as a picture viewer, Live TV, and radio tuner that you have in other DVR programs. The interface is similar to Media Center XP but without the flair that makes MCE loved by many. But when you’re used to such polished programs as MCE and
BeyondTV, the Cyberlink program isn’t as strong.
ATI’s first product using the Theater 550 chip is a great success. I didn’t have any driver issues and the cards ran like a champ for a few days straight and without a restart. The Remote Wonder Plus is a definite improvement over the original design with its low profile and a great bonus that comes with the card. The price is $50 more than a Hauppauge
PVR-150; a product that also includes a remote but no FM tuner. The Cyberlink package is a little lacking especially with no guide currently but that will change with a software update. There’s also no MMC support currently and there’s talk that there won’t be. I’m not that upset over it as this card is really suited to be used in other applications. Put this card in a system with a
HDTV Wonder and you’ll have some great TV viewing on your hands. I’m holding out on a dual tuner version of this card and with the smaller tuner box, they shouldn’t have any problems putting them on a PCB and still keep the size small. The
TV Wonder Elite is a good buy for those looking for a single tuner card and now I can recommend another brand of TV cards besides Hauppauge when someone asks me what tuner they should get.
-Update- There seems to be a problem with the
TV Wonder Elite in combinations with some motherboards (ABIT) and ATI video cards. The system would work fine until the
TV Wonder Elite card was inserted. The system would not boot and you'd get a beep code of one long and two short. Putting the cards in different systems with different motherboards worked without a hitch. If you change the video card from an ATI brand to NVIDIA, it would work as well. It's hard to pinpoint who should fix this but I'm leaning towards the motherboard manufacturer. If more information pops up, I'll be sure to update this article.
A-
There's another TV card I'd recommend to those building an HTPC and this is it. The TV Wonder Elite gives ATI a solid TV capture card and one that works well in MCE and other programs.
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