Ati Hdtv Wonder Pci Tuner Card

If you're a TV junkie, then HDTV is your ultimate fix.

With its heftier processing requirements, HDTV seems like a natural for PCs, but it's been somewhat slow to roll out. Companies like MyHD and Hauppauge have had HDTV cards on the market for some time, though the available off-the-air (OTA) content still varies in availability, depending on both location and time of day. Still, the trend is towards more HDTV programming on the airwaves and ATI has a solution for home theater PC (HTPC) enthusiasts to bring high-definition goodness into the mix.

With the HDTV Wonder, ATI was looking to raise the bar and drop the price in the PCI HDTV tuner card market. Has it succeeded on both counts? Turn the page and find out.

First off, here's what you get in the $199 box:

HDTV Wonder PCI card (contains both NTSC and ATSC tuners)

ATI's Multimedia Center (MMC) 9.0 software suite, which includes apps for standard-definition TV, HDTV, a media library/transcoder that can create DVDs and ATI's DVD player

Mini-breakout box that has composite and S-Video inputs, as well as analog stereo inputs

Indoor HDTV Antenna

ATI Remote Wonder

While most HDTV tuner cards check in at close to $300, the HDTV wonder has a MSRP of just $199, with a probable street price of about $180. In addition, ATI provides better integration of its DTV tuner app.

The card itself features a Philips HDTV tuner box but ATI's NXT2004 receiver chip does much of the heavy lifting. The NXT2004 VSB (vestigial sideband modulation)/QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) Receiver is designed for off-air and cable digital television receivers, set-top boxes, PCDTV, and datacast applications where cost, low power and industry-leading performance are a must. The NXT2004 Multimode VSB/QAM demodulator can work in either the ATSC compliant 8 VSB mode for terrestrial broadcasting, or DOCSIS-compliant 64 QAM or 256 QAM modes for Digital TV-Cable Connect and Digital TV-Cable Interactive reception. However, in the HDTV Wonder product, the NXT2004 is set up only as a 70-channel off-the-air HDTV receiver, with no support for CableCard.

The HDTV Wonder can also pull in Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) sub-channel information, which content providers can optionally encode in their broadcast. If present, PSIP provides Electronic Program Guide (EPG) meta-information, including the program name, a synopsis of the content, its TV Rating, and what audio channels are available. More information about PSIP can be found here.

Currently, HDTV Wonder doesn't provide support for CableCard, a feature now found in HDTVs that will allow them to operate with an HDTV cable provider without a tuner box. The HDTV Wonder is compatible with most DX9-compliant graphics cards, although features like ThruView and Desktop TV will require one of ATI's own graphics cards using the Radeon 9500 or higher GPU.

In terms of I/O, the HDTV Wonder has two coaxial antenna inputs: one for OTA HDTV, the other for either an NTSC antenna or an analog cable feed. The card can also pass along 5.1 Dolby Digital audio streams to your sound card for decoding and output to multichannel speaker systems, although the card itself does not have any S/PDIF output.

Since there are no objective benchmarks we can run to test HDTV, we went with a sequence of subjective experiential tests to evaluate the HDTV Wonder. We focused on the three major things the HDTV is built to do:

HDTV content viewing/time-shifting HDTV recording and playback HDTV content transcoding and output as DVD content

ATI supplied us with a full system for this review, as the company was getting a few software kinks worked out at review time. The system we tested never crashed or locked up, though we did encounter some A/V sync issues when recording HDTV content, but more on that in a bit.

Our test system had the following component load-out: 2.8GHz Pentium 4 CPU Intel 865G chipset ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card with 128MB of DDR-2 SDRAM 1GB of DDR SDRAM C-Media motherboard-down audio

For our display, we used the Gateway 30" LCD HDTV panel and NEC's 61" plasma HDTV panel. On both displays, we ran at each panel's native resolution: 1280x768 for the Gateway and 1367x768 on the NEC.

Historically, standard-definition TV (480i NTSC) always looked kind of washed out when run on a PC. To some degree, this is a function of your screen resolution, since higher resolutions on the PC force more scaling, which further amplifies NTSC's many visible artifacts. But even at modest resolutions like 1024x768, Old NTSC is often painful to watch compared to the superior image quality of DVD movies. HDTV, however, turns that on its head. Well-produced, well-encoded 720p and 1080i HDTV content looks stunning on a PC display. Because of the greater horizontal resolution, this content looks markedly better than most DVD movie content.

Once we got the test system in place and connected the antenna, we set about the business of trying to tune in OTA HDTV stations. Our offices are located in downtown San Francisco--most of the TV transmission towers are located south of the downtown area. We had a nearly line-of-sight alignment to those towers for the included HDTV antenna, although reception was dodgy at times. This is one of the greatest headaches with OTA HDTV: you don't know how good or bad your reception will be until you get gear in your house and start experimenting. It's the old terrestrial antenna problem all over again, which is why cable TV and satellite broadcast services are all the rage these days.

A great way to start these experiments is to find out which stations in your local area are broadcasting OTA HD signals. A good place to find that is at TitanTV, a handy online EPG site that's compatible with a number of PVR programs. Once you have that list in hand, you can figure out which stations come in and which don't.

Unlike NTSC, if a receiver can only partially tune in an HD signal, the tuner will display nothing. In some cases, we got audio only, but gone are snowy, ghosting images of poorly received NTSC stations of yesteryear.

ATI includes its first-generation Remote Wonder control in the box with the HDTV Wonder and, while it's a fine remote, the company made no modifications to it (physical or logical) to accommodate the HDTV Wonder. For instance, ATI has two discrete applications for NTSC and HDTV called TV and DTV, respectively. If you press the TV button the Remote Wonder, you get the standard TV application.

By default, there's no hard-wired button to invoke the HDTV application. We quickly programmed one of the Remote Wonder's buttons to handle this chore, but it's something ATI should have mapped out, as well as a crib sheet that shows command mappings for the HDTV app. We wound up having to find a number of them by Braille. For example, you might want to know what station you're watching and what resolution that station is offering. In DTV mode, you press the TV button to get that information. That's right, the button that normally puts you into standard-definition TV when you first start up becomes a station info button when in DTV mode. From any other context, this button will invoke the NTSC TV application.

We quickly discovered that almost none of our local stations include PSIP sub-channel information, which in turn led us to discover that the HDTV Wonder doesn't have an HDTV-specific electronic program guide application. The first problem isn't ATI's fault--after all, if the data isn't there, the software can't present it. However, the lack of an EPG function is a pretty basic oversight. We wound up using TitanTV to find out what was on during our testing.

ATI actually has a patent on a "thumb-surfing" feature that quickly scans and screen-caps a frame from each tunable station and displays them as thumbnails. Clicking on a thumbnail takes you to that station. According to ATI, the company opted not to implement the feature because of channel changing latency. However, in the absence of PSIP meta-information and an HDTV-specific EPG, ATI's HDTV application would do well to incorporate this feature. ATI includes the same GuidePlus+ EPG software package for NTSC listings that have adorned All-in-Wonder products for quite some time now. This application works well enough, though ATI still needs to fold its EPG data for SDTV and now HDTV into its EazyLook 10-foot UI.

We were able to tune in the local NBC, ABC, UPN, and Fox affiliates with little difficulty. We watched parts of the last NBA Finals game on our local ABC affiliate, which was broadcast at 720p resolution. HDTV Wonder's image quality was very good indeed. Skin and hair detail were sharp and easily discerned and we could read just about every tattoo on every player on the floor. Neither of our test display panels has a native resolution of 1280x720, so we wound up with horizontal black bars on either side of the picture. Even so, the HDTV Wonder did a very good job bringing all the hoops action right into our offices.

We also spent some time watching an Oakland Athletics game, also broadcast in 720p by our local Fox affiliate. While the production value wasn't as polished as that seen in the NBA Finals, the image quality was still dramatically better than NTSC and made taking in a ball game that much more enjoyable. We did notice some audio stuttering on some stations, though this was likely due to the C-Media motherboard-down audio solution present in the test system ATI sent us. We found that time-shifting the content slightly resolved this problem.

Time Stands Still

Next, we hit that magic button that made PVRs so revolutionary: pause. HD-resolution PVRs are in the works from TiVo, Moxy and Dish Networks, but almost all of them will carry very high price-tags--some around $1,000. A PC equipped with an HDTV Wonder would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,400, but it would be a much more versatile machine that gives users more control their recorded content. However, you do give up the convenience of cable or satellite service and are limited to local, over-the-air broadcasts. So you won't get goodies like HBO and ESPN in high definition.

We paused the NBA Finals game and left it paused for several minutes. We then came back to the system and un-paused it and used the "ahead-time" we had stored up to jump past commercial breaks. The Remote Wonder's transport controls set fast-forward/rewind speeds in the following increments: 2X, 4X 8X, and 16X. The remote's cursor-arrow buttons jump you ahead by 10- and 30-second increments, although this feature is poorly documented.

One difficulty ATI has handled well is the contextual shift between driving the HDTV app with your keyboard and mouse versus driving it using the Remote Wonder. When you press any button on the Remote Wonder, you are put into ATI's EazyLook 10-foot UI environment. EazyLook is designed to let you drive your PC like a CE device from the comfort of your Barcalounger sans keyboard and mouse. Hitting the Escape key on your keyboard will bring you back to keyboard/mouse mode.

While time-shifting via the Pause button worked well, recording content on the fly using the Record button was less intuitive. For instance, in EazyLook mode, pressing Record would begin recording whatever program you were watching, but there was no prompt to ask you when to stop recording (i.e. record for a set time interval, record until a certain time, record until the end of this show, etc.). In addition, we noted that the A/V sync occasionally became misaligned during recording and remained slightly off during playback. This took the form of people's dialog not being aligned with their mouth movement. The problem was intermittent--in most instances the A/V sync was fine. Again, this may just be an issue with the audio chip on the motherboard.

Another problem is that, in the absence of PSIP data, the application doesn't ask you for a friendly name for the show you're about to record. The result is that content is often named using only a channel name. The Media Library application displays your recorded shows in Detail View, but there's no preview option, so the only way to see what content a file contains is to open it using ATI's Media Player application. Another irritation is that the Properties for each file are scant and don't present details like the resolution, video codec, audio codec, and duration. Instead, all you get is basic file info like creation date, file type, file size, and last viewed date.

The HDTV Wonder can transcode captured HDTV content to a variety of formats. Here's the range of choices you get:

Setting Resolution Compression Ratio High-Definition MPEG-2 Same as original content 0.76:1 (file is larger than original) DVD High 720x480 2.5:1 DVD Medium 352x480 5.0:1 DVD Low 352x240 14.8:1 Super VideoCD 480x480 7.4:1 VideoCD 352x240 13.1:! Home Theater MPEG-4 640x480 4.7:1 Portable MPEG-4 352x240 13.5:1 Handheld MPEG-4 320x240 17.8:1

Curiously, the HD Wonder doesn't seem to have a provision for capturing an HD transport stream directly. We did timed tests using several of these settings with a seven-minute clip from the NBA Finals, which was broadcast in 720p.

Setting Time in Seconds (Lower is Better) High-Definition MPEG-2 90 DVD High 350 DVD Medium 305 DVD Low 269 Home Theater MPEG-4 316

When converting to an HD MPEG-2 format, ATI's transcoder required very little CPU overhead, since very little (if any) conversion was happening to the content itself. This transcode likely only required changing container information/formatting that describes the contents and time-code. Converting to the other formats hammered the system's 2.8GHz Pentium-4 CPU and required considerably more time. Interestingly, the DVD Low quality setting was quite a bit faster than the other encodes. However, we should mention that all encode happened at better than real-time speed.

In terms of visual quality, there was no real difference between the ATI VCR format and the transcoded HD MPEG-2 stream, which isn't surprising. However, all the "DVD quality" encode levels converted the aspect ratio of the video to 4:3, even though it was originally 16:9. What's worse is that the transcoder did this without asking us if this is what we wanted and there no options in Preferences panels to preserve aspect ratio. Given the original HD's 16:9 aspect ratio, an anamorphic option would be very handy here. But at the very least, the encoder should warn that it's going to change the aspect ratio. According to ATI, they're aware of this issue and the next release of their transcoder will allow you to choose whether to convert the aspect ratio, or preserve it.

A major annoyance here is that there is no batch transcode option. To make HD content more portable--and playable on systems without ATI hardware--we'd really like the ability to batch up multiple recorded HD programs, assign a quality level, then kick off the encoder and go to bed. Then in the morning, we'd have all our HD content converted to MPEG-2 format. Or, given how little overhead there appears to be in transcoding from ATI's VCR format to MPEG-2, there should be the option to have the HDTV app record programs directly to MPEG-2 rather than having to do a transcode after the fact. Another way to attack this problem would be to have an option to automatically transcode HD content in the middle of the night when the system isn't being used for TV viewing. But suffice it to say, the transcoding options need to be beefed up somewhat.

A very cool feature: the HDTV Wonder can directly create DVDs of captured content. However, this feature has its fair share of rough edges. There's no big button that says something simple like "Make DVD." Instead, the feature is in a button in the upper right of the UI called Create Media Layout. ATI chose this name because the application gives you the choice of creating a disc using DVD, VideoCD or Super VideoCD format. And if you have friends in Europe, you also have the option of using PAL encoding rather than NTSC.

Next, you choose which media you want to include on this disc. At a minimum, Media Library will need to convert MPEG-2 files to .VOB files so that a DVD player can understand the video content. If the content is still in an HD format (ATI's .VCR file format or an HD MPEG-2 file), the app will need to transcode it down to a resolution DVD players can handle. You can choose from a variety of backgrounds for the DVD Menu, but the wizard doesn't show you what they'll look like, so you're kind of flying blind on that one. It's not a big deal, but something ATI should fix in the next version of its MMC software. Once you kick off the DVD creation process, Media Library either transcodes or imports the selected content to get it ready to be written out to DVD. However, every time we created a DVD, the app made us choose which burner we wanted to use. Our test system only had a single burner in it and this isn't a question we should have to answer every time we go to make a DVD disc. Ask once and remember the setting.

We took the three versions of the NBA Finals clip we encoded using "DVD-level" quality settings and created a DVD using Media Library. However, the disc we wound up with stuttered badly on two different DVD players we tried: our reference Yamaha DVD-S2300MK2 and the DVD combo drive in a Dell Precision M60 notebook. We made ATI aware of this issue and the company acknowledged that the current implementation of the encoder may cause stuttering on some DVD players, which did occur on the two players we tested. Unfortunately, if your player suffers from this issue, then DVDs made using the HDTV Wonder will be unusable in that player. Unfortunately, this reduces what might have been a very cool feature to something of a crapshoot.

With the HDTV Wonder, ATI has hit the HDTV deck running, though not without a bit of stumbling. Image quality is very solid and there's a good array of PVR and recording features. For $200, this represents a whole lot of HD goodness in one box. The issues still to be worked out fall into two broad categories: being able to tune in local over-the-air HD stations and software fixes ATI still needs to make. The first issue will largely depend on where you live, how many local stations are broadcasting OTA HDTV signals, and your proximity to transmission towers. From our brief initial experience, OTA HDTV content offerings are still kind of spotty during the day, even in a major market like San Francisco. Unfortunately, no amount of processing horsepower is going to make daytime television suck less. Prime time is another story, of course --the offerings get considerably better. Good prime-time series and sports programming are glorious to watch in HD and makes a world of difference in the overall experience.

Although we found a number of software-related issues that need to be addressed, the overall package is a solid offering. At this point, here's our wish list for feature additions/improvements:

10 Things This Product Needs:

Two words: batch transcoding A crib sheet for the Remote Wonder's commands in the HDTV app An HDTV EPG program that integrates elegantly with EazyLook. A preview window in the Media Library application A simple "i" button that will give content info (channel, program, EPG info, HD resolution, etc.) irrespective of app context. More than once, pushed the TV button when looking at recorded content to find out info about and was launched into the regular TV app. The option to have HDTV app write out MPEG-2 program stream by default rather than having to transcode. When Record is pushed and PSIP info is absent, a prompt to give the content a recognizable name to make later retrieval easier. Thumbnail surfing feature for both TV apps Automated batch transcoding during the wee small hours of the morning A better UI for creation of DVDs from recorded HDTV and TV content

For now, you'll need to be running a DX9-compliant with graphics card. ATI is also working on several All-in-Wonder packages that will include the new HDTV hardware. ATI declined to give an ETA as to when those products will ship. For HTPC enthusiasts, the HDTV Wonder will turn your rig into an HD-PVR that can share recorded HDTV content with all machines on your home network. And that's the real power of a PC-based HD-PVR: the control you get over the HD content once you've captured it. The idea is not to turn around and file-share it on KaZaA, but to view it on any PC on your network or copy it onto a laptop to view on long trips.

As an HDTV PVR/viewing device, the HDTV Wonder does a very good job, filling in what had been a key gap in ATI's video-focused products. It's true that some have lamented that OTA HDTV is already headed toward obsolescence. To the contrary--the party is just getting started. Premium content will live where it always has: on cable and satellite providers' networks. But to view network broadcasts of prime-time shows and sports events, OTA HDTV is a great way to get yourself started. Maybe there'll even be a PC-based HDTV tuner that can get CableCard support built into it. We can dream, can't we?

Product ATI HDTV Wonder Web Site: www.ati.com Pros: Very good image quality, both live and in time-shifted mode; Recorded content looks very good as well; functions as both an NTSC and HDTV tuner; nice price Cons: Some kinks to be worked out; OTA HDTV reception varies depending on location (not ATI's fault) Summary: Solid hardware and good software come together to create a good first-generation OTA HDTV offering. The $200 price includes both a remote and an antenna, not to mention ATI's suite of multimedia applications. There are rough edges still to be sanded, but overall, HDTV Wonder is a great place to get your HD party started. Price: $199 (incl. antenna and remote) Score:

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.