Mobile Tv Tuner

Techies and TV junkies on the go have been waiting for a portable but potent USB-based TV input card. Is ATI's new TV Wonder 2.0 the answer to their prayers? ET editor-in-chief Jim Louderback weighs in.

It's not often that something new gets added to my bag of mobile electronics. I pride myself on traveling light, and with an IBM X31 notebook, Creative Zen NX MP3 player, Olympus digital camera, USB flash drive and Bose noise canceling headphones I'm already schlepping around a lot of devices, chargers and parts.

But ATI's new TV Wonder USB 2.0 has won a permanent place in my carry-on. It's the first USB-based TV input card I've tried that's both small enough to tuck handily in a corner of the bag, and robust enough to deliver a decent viewing experience even on a sub-notebook like my svelte ThinkPad. This $99 product turns most modern laptops into portable media centers—for recording and watching TV on the go.

The TV Wonder is relatively easy to install. My first experience with driver installation was unsuccessful, but because I tested a preliminary version of the installer CD (the hardware and drivers themselves were final), I couldn't progress to the final product. So, I completely uninstalled the first driver set and my second install went just fine. After loading up what seemed like hundreds of programs and drivers, I simply plugged the device into my laptop's USB 2.0 port, plugged a TV source into the TV Wonder unit, and started watching and recording live TV.

The device includes a standard 125-channel TV tuner that you can connect to an external antenna or analog cable TV feed. It also includes separate composite and S-Video inputs—a big improvement over ATI's previous USB offering, which needed an external barrel connector to convert composite to the single S-Video port. There are no video output ports on the box—this is a one-way TV-in device only. It also lacks an IR port, which means you'll have to pick up a separate product if you want your laptop or PC to control an external satellite or cable box.

The TV Wonder USB 2.0 is built around ATI's Theater 200 video decoder—which converts analog TV signals to a digital signal. Composite and tuner-based video signals are separated into color and brightness (a.k.a. chrominance and luminance) via the on-chip 2D 3-line comb filter. S-Video signal includes both already, so it doesn't need to be processed. The Theater 200 uses its internal video scaler to convert the video into the appropriate size--that is, from its native of 720x480 to a lower frame size--to conserve space. The uncompressed video is then transferred, through the USB 2.0 bus, into the PC.

This is a USB 2.0-only device. To maximize video quality, the external unit passes uncompressed full-frame video into the PC via the USB cable. That can require up to 20.5 megabits per second of bandwidth—more than four times the effective bandwidth of USB 1.1.

The video quality is pretty good—much better than USB 1.1-based video devices I've tested. I watched and recorded a variety of sources, from standard 4:3 DirecTV content via a composite connector, to analog cable pilfered from a hotel-based video feed, to a 16:9 feed of ESPN-HD, downsampled to S-Video by a Samsung SIR T-160 HD satellite receiver. In every case, live video on my laptop was acceptable, with little of the blurry and splotchy video I've seen with earlier generation products.

Surprisingly, I even figured out--quite by accident--how to record ESPN HD in 16:9 mode. One of the configuration screens has a 16:9 option: I selected it and my ESPN HD feed played back naturally in a nifty letterboxed video window on my PC.

You can record video in a number of formats, including MPEG2, MPEG4, MPEG1, AVI and WMF. ATI still includes its own VCR format—an MPEG4 variant that includes closed captioning. I recorded an entire Sunday Night Football game from ESPN HD—three and a half hours at an MPEG2 DVD quality of 720x480—and it took about 4 gigabytes of storage. ATI claims that its VCR format delivers similar quality at about 75% of the size, but I could see noticeable differences between the two.

Video playback of recorded material was acceptable, though I noticed some horizontal banding on fast-moving sports material when recorded at DVD quality. Along with supporting multiple recording formats and sizes, the ATI software includes "video soap," designed to clean away video artifacts. I changed my Soap setting from low to high, but it didn't appear to wipe away much of the banding. According to ATI's Group Product Manager, Blair Birmingham, it's a subtle effect, designed to eliminate salt-and-pepper MPEG artifacting.

Still, the banding was a slight nuisance, not a huge distraction. I thoroughly enjoyed flying cross-country Monday morning, watching the Broncos and the Chiefs butt heads. It was miles better than the scrawny seatback video screen showing TechTV reruns.

I also found that the TV Wonder USB 2.0 was great at recording video in hotel rooms. During a two-week trip across the Northeast U.S., I used it to time-shift news, sports, and other programming while out dining and carousing (and working, too). It was really interesting when I connected it to the ubiquitous LodgeNet system, which uses discrete channels for each pay-per-view movie and gaming session. ATI's bundled software scans for channels in use, so this let me eavesdrop on what my fellow travelers were up to. Based on an informal poll, porn makes up nearly 85% of in-room pay viewing—and just about everyone else really sucks at Donkey Kong. For more details, check out my story on Hacking the Hotel TV.

It's not all good, though. The TV Wonder USB 2.0 includes ATI's standard playback and record applications, which I find confusing to use, and overly complicated. The player, library and recording features need a dramatic overhaul. Instead of using ATI's player to watch my recorded video, I opted for Microsoft's Windows Media Player; its full-screen drag bar made skipping past commercials much easier.

The TV Wonder USB 2.0 does not include ATI's ubiquitous wireless Remote Wonder controller, which means you'll need to use your mouse and keyboard to record and watch TV. That's not a problem on a notebook, because you're typically within a foot or so of the LCD screen. But if you use the TV Wonder USB 2.0 to turn a desktop computer into a pseudo Media Center—hooked up to a large screen TV—you'll want the flexibility of ATI's $49 Remote Wonder (a half off coupon is in the box), and bundled software.

Its hardware requirements are also somewhat stiff: you'll need a 1.0 Ghz Pentium 4 or Celeron or an AMD K6 or Athlon processor. Recording video on my 1.6GHz Pentium M used, on average, around 30% of the CPU's capacity. A USB 2.0 port is required, along with an upgraded version of Windows XP or 2000 that supports it. You'll also need a 16-bit graphics card that supports DirectX overlay.

For TV on the go, ATI's TV Wonder USB 2.0 is the first device I've seen that does a decent job. For desktop computers, there are better options, including ATI's All-In-Wonder line of add-in cards, and the company's new HD Wonder (once you get it working). But if you're looking for a small, capable package to snarf video from hotel rooms or to watch pre-recorded video on the go, this is the product for you.

Product: TV Wonder USB 2.0 Summary: Small, lightweight USB 2.0 TV tuner card delivers decent video quality for notebook computers. Pros: Good video; easy to install; small box and power supply. Cons: Some video banding on playback; lackluster software; no remote control. Price: $99 (check prices) Company www.ATI.com Score

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

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