ATI TV Wonder Capture Card

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Capture Card

Features

Compatibility*

Cnx

Price

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ATI TV Wonder

Tv Tuner
Analog VideoIn

Win95 Win98 Win2K WinXP
Vista? NT4 ~~MAC~~ Linux
*based on user reports.

PCI

$50

6.9/10
129 votes

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Description (from the manufacturer site)

Watch TV on your PC in stereo
Get interactive TV listings with no monthly fee
Capture video and still images
Schedule and record TV programs
Scan channels at a glance
Zoom in on the action
Monitor closed captioning for Hot Words1
Play audio and video CDs2

Visit manufacturer's site

Comments

134 comments, Showing 1 to 25 comments

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Hey everyone. I bought an ATI TV Wonder All In One in 2003 and I have rarely used it until recently. I tried originally to capture video, but the quality was bad! So I stuck to capping video in picture format. The quality is still bad, but I am just starting to learn how to use it. Lucky for me today over a year after I bought it I found this place!!! This is the first site on the web where I have actually heared people having some of the same problems I have been having for at least nine months. The software is hard to install and it makes me mad every time I have to reinstall it. To an earlier poster named Charles thanks for mentioning the signal amplifer and walmart. Within seconds of reading that post I found the amplier on walmart.com and since I live within blocks of a store,I will go buy it tommorrow or be forced to buy it from the website. The software never worked correct with an antenna I was using when I first bought the software so I connected it to my satellite system, but it still comes in bad. I get lines and severe distortion using this crappy software. I also have a hard time recording in good quality. I have tried everything you can imagine. I hooked it up to a VHS, but I just don't feel that the VHS quality is sufficently good. The compression quality sucks badly. To another poster named Paul who said the support is horrible from ATI...you are right. I have e-mailed and got no response and called and got the wrong answer and the website is hard to use. Cyberlink PowerVCR-II which can be downloaded from TUCOWS(trial version) sounds much as well. I feel that most my troulbes come from not knowing much, but also I think since I bought the cards for about 65$ at a computer show then this must be the problem. Cheap price, Cheap results. I went to a computer class in 2001 and the professor was using Hauppauge WinTV 150 and that was much easier to use. I've heard good things about Pinnacle PCTV Rave too. But I was hoping to stick with this one for now. So I will try to amplifier and I will try the trial version of the other software and I will see what I can do. Maybe the ATI people make bad software, but if the capture card can work with another software then all is not lost, either.

Comments posted by Alan V. from Kansas from United States, November 11, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95 Win98 Win2K ~~WinXP~~ Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 5 of 10.

Works with Nero but always gives capture error with Studio 8. Very frustrating. Works good as a tv card though.

Comments posted by omer from United States, November 02, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 5 of 10.

I think ATI's capture is great using the registry tool from here! I had a AIW 128 Pro, needed to update my video card for TnL support for games, so, got this TV Wonder, a Radeon 7500, and stuck it in my AMD XP 2200, 256meg 2700 DDR 30gig 7200 rpm hard drive and using the registry tool, am getting good quality vcds, varying the bitrate according to length of the movie. Have captured at 2.0 mbps, no dropped frames. Now I discover that turning on the vbr of the registry tool just about cuts the size of the mpg in half, allowing me to easily put full movies on one cd with better than tape quality. I know I saw the information about the vbr somewhere in here, and it works great. I capture from my cable box and have no time for any conversion nonsense.

Comments posted by Anonymous from Other, April 20, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

I had major problems with this card on both Win98 and WinXP, the drivers suck and the TV program has limitations (only xxxX240 and lots of frames droped)and the compress quality is crap. Its the worst card I ever used for capturing (this includes using tweaks, universal drivers, Virtual dub, WDM-VFW Wrapper...etc). The only thing this is good at is just for TV viewing using DScaler. Other than that, your just torturing yourself :p

Comments posted by Ali from Other, April 11, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 1 of 10.

I would like to point out that the regular TV Wonder and the VE family are for the most part the same thing. I would not advise buying it. First off the picture quality sucks hardcore, also the sound is *only mono* and has a very irritating hiss or whining noise in the background that gets to be absolutely infuriating. you can hear an "eeeeeeee" noise in the background. this noise isn't overwhelming, at first, but once you start using this card for some more intensive capturing. and are spending lots of time watching the movies the noise starts to give you a headache. i've tried this card in 2 very different computers and the problem is the same. But if you are just curious about capturing this card might do the trick to pop that cherry, but i will guarantee you'll wanna get something better very soon after buying it.

Comments posted by Damagedcase from Canada, March 15, 2004:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 1 of 10.

1. TV quality could be better but it works ok. Use it hooked up to a 17inch monitor in the spare bedroom and as a TV for visitors. Been able to record TV shows up to two hours. Never need to record more thatn that. I've had it set on DVD and VCD quality at they have both been great.
2. Used it to capture video from my camcorder VHS-c using the inputs connections using ULEAD Video studio 5 and it works flawlessly.
Those are the main reasons I've used this card and I've had it since Dec 98 or 99. Can't remember but I've had this card in 3 different computers and it has worked in all of them. I upgraded the drivers when I migrated to Windows XP and after a couple of reboots it was recording in MPEG-2. First computer was a Windows 98SE 450MHZ Pentium, 2nd computer Windows 98SE AMD Athlon 1.3Ghz and now in a Win XP AMD ATHLON 2000+ Albatron MB,100 gig hard drive(40 and 60. I'm watching SCI-FI channel as I write this reviews. I'm going to upgrade to a 19inch monitor eventually.

Comments posted by madmouse from Other, November 08, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

These comments that you guys have made here are terrific and to the point.
1. Great card, great value (hardware).
2. Sad, sad software from ATI. Very hard to install, all drivers must be pointed to, installed in "logical" order, rebooted many times, but it can be done and it does work in Win98se and XP.
3.PowerVCRII- I wish I had found out earlier about Cyberlink PowerVCR II, it would have taken some of the pain out of the whole affair. I even use it instead of Adobe Premiere to edit movie shots and cut and merge tv shows.
4.Signal Amplifier- the comment about buying the $20.00 signal amplifier was right on the money, I bought mine at Walmart and couldn't be more pleased with the high quality improvement to my viewing and recording. Before getting it I wasted hours on Google groups looking for a solution to my poor picture quality.

Comments posted by Charles from Other, October 08, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Is a good tv tuner for any video card except a nvidia card. They may have fixed this, but when used with any geforce card, I would get a scrambled pattern sometimes similar to those when you watch pay per view tv. Switched to a Tv wonder USB to correct this.

Comments posted by Jason from Other, September 10, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 6 of 10.

The only thing worse than the software is ATI's support. Locks up any place betwen right after the splash screen to 2-3 minutes in. I have an XP1800 with an IWill XP333-R motherboard. Down loaded the latest drivers and patches, clean reload of Windows, removed all other adapters, tried a different video card, nothing helped. Returned the card think it was DOA, new one acted the same. Installed it in my old K6-3 (450Mhz) & DFI Mb and it works just drops some frames. Installed it in a XP2200 & Gigabyte GA7-ZXE seemed to work but it stops recording the audio 10-30 minutes into recording.

I downloaded a freeware program and drivers from sourceforge.net and it worked. I then downloaded Cyberlink PowerVCR-II trial and it works great on all the machines. I found PowerVCR-II for $9+$3 shipping on eBay.

ATI never responded to support over the web. Phone support told me it was a driver, then it was my motherboard.

Now 8 months later I went to upgrade a video card with video out and low and behold it won't work correctly with an ATI 9000 video card. However it does work fine with a GForce 3, GForce 2MX and an even an old TNT2-M64. Once again ATI's support was ....

Comments posted by PaulS from Other, May 28, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 1 of 10.

Good card, crappy drivers/software.
I wonder if ATI and Microsoft are the same company, considering their good hardware and bad software.
But you can always get good (and free) software in the Net.

I have always captured video in 640x480 under Win98SE and WinME using ATI drivers (that came with the card), but when I upgraded to WinXP they didn't worked anymore, and the drivers for XP only allow up to 240 lines.

So, if you want to capture more than 240 lines, get a driver like http://btwincap.sourceforge.net. I suggest you use VirtualDub and Divx 5. I capture video at 640x480 and the quality is DVD-like, using a good HD (7200 rpm, ATA66 will do), not too slow processor (Pentium III 533 MHz), capturing to MJPEG (picvideo) then converting to Divx5 with VirtualDub.

Hint: capture sound using directly your sound card, and not ATI TV Wonder. This card simply takes the signal to the sound card, anyway, and the less the signal travels, the better.

About watching TV with this card, I don't know... I use my TV set for that.

Comments posted by Jefferson from Other, April 07, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Quite good card, for the price.
ATI TVWonder, like many other TV-Cards, uses Brooktree (Philips) BT878; it's good for watching TV, however it has a lot of horizontal noise during capture, so if you want to capture from vhs you have to go for better cards, for various reasons: its noise is difficult to remove and it also makes compression much much harder.

Software it's TOTALLY trash. It has a lot of problems.
Just go for bt878 generic drivers and use virtualdub.

Comments posted by saverio m. from Other, March 21, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 7 of 10.

Belive it or not, I bought this card way back in 1999. It was the only cheap video capute card I could find at the time and I bought it for $69 CDN through work back in 1999 (worked at a computer shop).

Out of the box back then it worked great in Win98 and then later on Win98se.

The beta drivers I used when I first install Win2000 were horrendous, but the final release (MMC 7.1 I think) were fine.

Basically I just wanted to add my 2 cents, even though this has to be one of the cheapest cards available (and some 4 year old technology for my ATI TV Wonder PCI) it still works wonderfully. I'm sure more expensive cards could capture DVD quality video and sound, but for the price I couldn't ask for more. Rule of thumb for ANY computer hardware these days is always check for the latest drivers before installing.

Comments posted by dmaurer from Other, February 17, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95 Win98 Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Of all the people with problems using MMC, not one has mentioned that they made sure they had the newest gart drivers, or installed microsoft videocapture update before installing DX8.0, or having used the registry tool from this site? I've had 2 of the cards, used ATI's software and made over 200 movies, all looking better than tapes.

Comments posted by Anonymous from Other, February 04, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

This card is excellent for it´s price. I use it under W98 - of course with 3rd party soft, and under linux (SUSE 8,1) both super. Pitty that ATI original soft is more than horrible.

Comments posted by ivdol from Other, January 27, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux - Rated: 8 of 10.

Just wanted to say that many people posted under this card after buying the ATI TV Wonder VE, which is a different card, this card is not at best buy. The card at Best buy is the VE version which is the non-stereo version of the TV wonder. Just trying to clear up some confusion that others may have caused.

Comments posted by Starfury from Other, January 10, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

I read this forum a LOT before buying, and I have nothing but good things to say about this card. Setup was easy - no complications or problems. It worked fine with the latest drivers easily downloadable from ATI. I love the ability to have the TV signal as my Windows desktop background.

As for video editting, I have had no problems. Picture quality is as good as the source allows - my purpose was to archive VHS videos as well as time-shift and potentially save TV broadcasts.

Comments posted by David G. from Other, December 27, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

I was looking for an inexpensive card to capture video from old VHS tapes I have, after seeing this ATI TV Wonder on sale for $39 after $10 rebate at Best Buy I figured I'd give it a shot. For reference my computer is a P3 450 w/ 256k ram, Win XP. Took awhile to get it working right, but after I got decent software it worked great. The software that comes with it sucks big time, don't even bother trying it. Could not capture anywhere close to acceptable quality (only one out of 800 (yes 800) or so frames if I captured more than 10 sec of video!) I tried numerous other software packages I d/l'd, with not much better results. THE ONLY one that worked for me is PowerVCR, and it works flawlessly. Because of the limits of my PIII 450 I haven't tried capturing in MPEG-2, but for what I'm doing MPEG-1 is just fine anyway. I'm getting great quality captures with no frame loss, exactly what I was looking for. I highly recommend this card if used with the proper software, like PowerVCR. I'd rate it higher if the software it came with didn't suck so bad.

Comments posted by Mike from Other, December 19, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

I bought it cause i wanted to digitize music videos and tv shows. the ups and downs compared to my next pinacle av card are. its faster than the pinnacle but the pic quality isnt too great. and it only records in mono. had some driver issues had to download and install drivers several times. software promise on box wasnt on cd that sucked. it is ok if you just want to rip a quick ut of video or rip it quickly not real time though but not bad. the option to schedule recording tv shows i thought would be great so i could select save to my ftp folder and automaticly save programs and they would immed be avail for download. no luck it only savs in some kind of mgeg1 format that nothing i have plays. one bright spot though pinnacle studio 8 works with card. and i can now ues card and cam corder for webcam it has the best uality of any webcam i have ever seen. and i can also play dvd movies thru my webcam on yahoo.

Comments posted by cyberplex from Other, December 17, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 6 of 10.

Excellent product for the money. I believe the actual hardware design was modified/improved in 2000 or 2001. Like many tuners it work much better if you use it with a $20 VHF signal amplifier, especially if you are splitting your cable. Some recommend dropping coax in favor of the composite inputs for a good picture, but then you can't use the tuner. The latest drivers are fine, and the TV app is decent and does good capture. Guide+ is a great app, but the scheduled recording feature always crashes my system. Crappy second-rate extras like a VCD viewer and a file player add nothing to the package. I bought PowerVCR II for this card and have never looked back. It gets better picture and allows 480-line capturing in better quality MPEG-1/2 than the ATI MMC TV app can do. PowerVCR also does scheduled recording flawlessly. I think PowerVCR could use some improvements (nit-pick interface issues), but it definitely improves my experience with this card. I do like the configurability of the ATI TV app for AVI cap though, but rarely use it. I also use this card to cap from my SVHS-C camcorder through S-video and I get great results. I burn everything to SVCD and it looks great.

Comments posted by Brad from Other, November 15, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

Great Video Card:
Originally had some problems with audio playback on recording but changed the back audio port from line-in to microphone and under window's control panel with sounds changed the microphone option from playback to recording. After this also went under advanced settings and took it off of db gain. Was not able to play well under MPEG-2 but when changing to regular MPEG playback after audio adjustments playback was suprisingly well. Recording had good quality and after making changes to audio, good sound. Only problem is that it doesn't come with video editor and occasionally the picture is out of synch(very rare). Only tested in capturing VHS files and not TV.

Comments posted by DM from Other, October 28, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

I had some difficulty with using this card with virtual dub UNITL I decided to use the following generic driver found at this website: http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/

PLEASE NOTE: IT WILL PREVENT THE ATI DRIVER FROM WORKING. But who cares.

The driver allowed other features in V-Dub such as the ability to make video adjustments.

Also make sure to visit:
http://www.tv-cards.com/drivers.htm

I give the card a 10 for the money (and rebate!!), but the apps SUX!!!!

Comments posted by pbnewsom from Other, August 01, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

If it works on your system, the quality is great but on mine system, it would hang in win2k without capturing anything and in win98, would randomly crap out. Make sure the place you get it at have a good return policy.

Comments posted by tuco1979 from Other, August 01, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 ~~Win2K~~ WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 3 of 10.

I bought this card to transfer my old vhs into vcd and the quality is good for the price. The software is easy to install, correct. Maybe better with Power-VCR II.

Burn with nero 5.59 and play on Pioneer dv-343. Do a good work.

I recommend...

Comments posted by Eruption from Other, July 18, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

I have this card. I've used it under both Windows ME and XP and it continuosly crashes when I use the ATI software. It works well under Power VCR and WinDVR. Only, when I shut down the program, I can still here the audio playing; I have to reboot the computer to get it to stop.
Also, do you know of a capture card where the sound is connected to the sound card internally?

Comments posted by Lordmg2 from Other, July 16, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 5 of 10.

It's a good buy for a capture card just cost you 70 bucks.Works fine under windows XP Pro and Me.(did not try Win NT or 2000) PowerVCRII software has better capture quality than using ATI MultiMedia Center.easy installation.(PII350/128RAM/S3Trio3D)

Comments posted by Jesse Gong from Other, May 14, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 9 of 10.

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Feature
What kind of main capture features it supports
Analog VideoIn = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input
Video Card = If it is a Video Card/Graphic Card
Tv Tuner = Built-In TV-Tuner
Digital TV = Built-In Digital TV-Tuner
DV/Firewire = DV/Firewire/i.Link input
DV Converter = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input and converts to DV video
MPEG1 hardware = Capture directly MPEG1(VCD) video using hardware*
MPEG2 hardware = Capture directly MPEG2(SVCD and DVD) video using hardware*
MJPEG hardware = Capture directly to MJPEG using hardware*
MPEG4 hardware = Capture directly to MPEG4(DivX,Xvid) video using hardware*
* = Most capture cards can capture to this format using software but it usually requires a very fast computer, if it supports realtime capturing it uses the capture cards hardware and it doesn't require a very fast computer and you may get better quality but less options/settings than software capturing.

Compatibility
What Operating System our users have reported that it works on, Win95=Works ~~Win95~~=Does not work Win95?=Not tested This is user based.

Cnx = Connection
What type of connection the capture device has to the computer, PCI, AGP, USB1/1.1/2, DV or PCMCIA.

Price
The price in US dollar.

Rating
The first rating is based on a weighted rank (the true Bayesian), it requires at least 5 votes to get a weighted rating.
The second rating between the ( ) is a normal average rating.

Comment
User comments, click on view to view them or add to post a own comment.

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