HTDV and me... (adventures in home theatre pc's)
ATI HDTV Wonder review/comments
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
My adventures in HDTV (for what they are worth).
With a spare PC hooked up to a nice 17" Samsung flat tube computer monitor in my little corner of the house, I decided it was time to try to move into the Hi-Def side of home theatre pc's.
I've been eye-ing the ATI HDTV Wonder card (linky: CompUSA HDTV Wonder info) and finally saved up enough pennies from my current pay week to get one. After the company x-mas party last week, I ran up to the closest CompUSA and picked one up while I could still get the (then offered) $50.00 instant rebate price break on it. That brought the price down to $149.00 plus tax, hard to swallow, but close enough that I could swing it.
I got the card, took it home, and held back initial resistance towards installing it that same day (was going to wait and do it on Saturday last, but opted instead to multi-task and did that install while playing Trivial Pursuit on the Xbox against my wife and son { family time points = good!!! } )
The package comes in a big box that from the sides is triangular, like a half of a rectangular box. It's odd-shaped because the box includes (inside) a wide flat box that has an indoor HDTV/UHF antenna in it, that is shoved over top of a smaller box that contains the actual PCI based card, along with the (lacking detail) manual, driver disc and such. (Image of box below). The box is rather large, and doesn't fit on store shelves easily, so it tends to be an item you must ASK a sales weenie to find for you.
The install for the card is not as simplistic as it should be. I thought I was being smart and downloaded the latest drivers and software for the card (I was already using the newest MMC software versions for the already in use AIW RADEON 9600 Pro that is in that pc) and installed those before ever installing the card. That didn't work though, as even with that done, after installing the card the DTV application refused to work, and wasn't found by the MMC software so it wasn't included in the ATI Launchpad side bar.
I checked all over the ATI site for FAQs and other tips and got no where (but to frustration) fast. Did some googling and hit upon suggestions at Tom's hardware site that helped (not perfect, but helpful). Basically I had to uninstall all versions of ATI MMC software, uninstall the new drivers that I had install, install the DTV decoder and QFE (not sure what that part is) software first, and then go back and install the s/w that was on the CD that came with the card. After that, I could then go back and update drivers and install the newer MMC software, and finally I was able to get both the old (already working) standard tuner decoder / tv app working as well as bring up the new DTV application.
When you start the DTV app (after oking license agreements), you go through setting up a scan for channels type thing. This is something I'm not thrilled with, as there's no way to "lock" in channels that you've already found and keep them listed. For example, I can get either Baltimore or DC area channels, depending on where I aim the antenna, but... the easiest way to get the channels added to the list is to do an "autoscan" for channels (since I don't necessarily know in advance the DTV channel numbers). If I point towards Baltimore and auto-scan, then the list of existing channels from DC is cleared out, and only the Baltimore channels that I'm actually receiving are found and listed. If I'm mispointing by a bit and I go back to fine tune for a particular channel, then I may lose a channel that was already found when I autoscan again. Ugh, stupid and frustrating.
I scanned through both Baltimore and DC area channels multiple times to try to figure out what was where, and where I needed to point. The indoor antenna worked "ok" at best, and seemed to be a bit weak for pulling in many of the stations to an acceptable level.
For the record, I'm about 25 air miles away from the towers around DC, about 30 miles or so from the ones in Baltimore. I need about 90 degrees of spread to properly point to either side.
I have a big ugly outside antenna that I was trying to use previously for over-the-air reception that should get about 70 - 90 miles worth of good UHF reception (highly directional though, unfortunately). On Saturday, I went and got a new cable to use to hook into that antenna, and definitely saw a lot of improvement to the HDTV performance. If the signal quality is low (between 30 - 60% or so on the meter), the HDTV wonder is very "jittery". It'll stutter as the signal wavers, and you'll get a very unwatchable product. Switching to the outside antenna solved that problem very well, and best yet for me, my outside antenna is hooked up with a nice rotor that I can use for changing the antenna direction at a whim.
I finally went through adding all of the stations "manually" on Saturday afternoon/evening, using lists from various sources that specify the proper channel numbers to try for. With that done, I finally have a nice list of channels, though as I go from one channel to another I get a nice "no signal" box when I'm pointed at Baltimore while tuned to a DC station (or vice versa).
There are still several stations I can't get -- it seems that our local UPNs (both Baltimore and DC) are in low power only mode, and not broadcasting very far with their signals. A big surprise is that I've not been able to tune in WETA, which broadcasts with plenty of power, and should be easily pulled in. I'm about 30 miles (give or take) from their towers, and I'm pretty sure pointed in the right direction (I did confirm it via signal strength meter), but never got above about 30% for their signal. Don't know for sure why (hoping perhaps someone else may have info on the HDTV signal power issues to comment on please!!)
On the plus side, I have a nice (rearranged things to do this) Samsung 17" flat tube monitor on my HTPC. The signals that do come in (the majors, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, local PBS, WB) are gorgeous. Crisp, sharp, and easy on my eyes. Compared to the poor signal quality of most of the VHF broadcasts of those same stations, it's night and day. The UHF stations were coming in nicely before, but look much crisper now too.
I watched some of the football game on FOX on Sunday on the FOX 780p hi-def broadcast. Very nice, though it still wasn't quite as sharp as I would have expected.
On the other hand, Monday nite football last nite was absolutely perfect. It was great to see a nice wide screen broadcast with very nice clarity.
I'm still very skeptical of the real "value" of upgrading to HDTV in the long run. Until the costs come way down, I don't see the sense in upgrading, as I really do get nice quality out of my DirecTV setup (which broadcasts the same "DT" versions of the channels I'm now getting on my HTPC, versus the crappy analog versions I was getting before using my over-the-air antenna setup on my TV).
I bought the ATI card on a whim, figuring it would be a nice toy, and would give me a cheap entry point to HDTV. I'm hoping to perhaps do some home brew recordings of stuff like Desperate Housewives and Lost, watch stuff like 24 live, and of course, want to be able to catch football games, and later (when the seasons starts again) be able to catch NASCAR races in HD. For now this seems to be a good way to get my feet wet, while not wasting a ton of money buying expensive equipment that will probably have to be replaced over time.
OH!!! One big important note here - the ATI HDTV Wonder card *only* works for over-the-air HDTV. It will not accept HD input (it has input for SVideo, and traditional RCA inputs for Video and L/R audio). It will NOT work for cable or satellite HDTV input. Again, *over* the air only. Do not plan on using the card with cable or satellite.
Hope this info is useful for anyone else considering such an approach. For the money, I like the ATI card, though the manual is pretty weak, support is a joke, and the included antenna is useful only for initial setup and testing if you don't don't use a powered amplifier of some sort.
With a spare PC hooked up to a nice 17" Samsung flat tube computer monitor in my little corner of the house, I decided it was time to try to move into the Hi-Def side of home theatre pc's.
I've been eye-ing the ATI HDTV Wonder card (linky: CompUSA HDTV Wonder info) and finally saved up enough pennies from my current pay week to get one. After the company x-mas party last week, I ran up to the closest CompUSA and picked one up while I could still get the (then offered) $50.00 instant rebate price break on it. That brought the price down to $149.00 plus tax, hard to swallow, but close enough that I could swing it.
I got the card, took it home, and held back initial resistance towards installing it that same day (was going to wait and do it on Saturday last, but opted instead to multi-task and did that install while playing Trivial Pursuit on the Xbox against my wife and son { family time points = good!!! } )
The package comes in a big box that from the sides is triangular, like a half of a rectangular box. It's odd-shaped because the box includes (inside) a wide flat box that has an indoor HDTV/UHF antenna in it, that is shoved over top of a smaller box that contains the actual PCI based card, along with the (lacking detail) manual, driver disc and such. (Image of box below). The box is rather large, and doesn't fit on store shelves easily, so it tends to be an item you must ASK a sales weenie to find for you.
The install for the card is not as simplistic as it should be. I thought I was being smart and downloaded the latest drivers and software for the card (I was already using the newest MMC software versions for the already in use AIW RADEON 9600 Pro that is in that pc) and installed those before ever installing the card. That didn't work though, as even with that done, after installing the card the DTV application refused to work, and wasn't found by the MMC software so it wasn't included in the ATI Launchpad side bar.
I checked all over the ATI site for FAQs and other tips and got no where (but to frustration) fast. Did some googling and hit upon suggestions at Tom's hardware site that helped (not perfect, but helpful). Basically I had to uninstall all versions of ATI MMC software, uninstall the new drivers that I had install, install the DTV decoder and QFE (not sure what that part is) software first, and then go back and install the s/w that was on the CD that came with the card. After that, I could then go back and update drivers and install the newer MMC software, and finally I was able to get both the old (already working) standard tuner decoder / tv app working as well as bring up the new DTV application.
When you start the DTV app (after oking license agreements), you go through setting up a scan for channels type thing. This is something I'm not thrilled with, as there's no way to "lock" in channels that you've already found and keep them listed. For example, I can get either Baltimore or DC area channels, depending on where I aim the antenna, but... the easiest way to get the channels added to the list is to do an "autoscan" for channels (since I don't necessarily know in advance the DTV channel numbers). If I point towards Baltimore and auto-scan, then the list of existing channels from DC is cleared out, and only the Baltimore channels that I'm actually receiving are found and listed. If I'm mispointing by a bit and I go back to fine tune for a particular channel, then I may lose a channel that was already found when I autoscan again. Ugh, stupid and frustrating.
I scanned through both Baltimore and DC area channels multiple times to try to figure out what was where, and where I needed to point. The indoor antenna worked "ok" at best, and seemed to be a bit weak for pulling in many of the stations to an acceptable level.
For the record, I'm about 25 air miles away from the towers around DC, about 30 miles or so from the ones in Baltimore. I need about 90 degrees of spread to properly point to either side.
I have a big ugly outside antenna that I was trying to use previously for over-the-air reception that should get about 70 - 90 miles worth of good UHF reception (highly directional though, unfortunately). On Saturday, I went and got a new cable to use to hook into that antenna, and definitely saw a lot of improvement to the HDTV performance. If the signal quality is low (between 30 - 60% or so on the meter), the HDTV wonder is very "jittery". It'll stutter as the signal wavers, and you'll get a very unwatchable product. Switching to the outside antenna solved that problem very well, and best yet for me, my outside antenna is hooked up with a nice rotor that I can use for changing the antenna direction at a whim.
I finally went through adding all of the stations "manually" on Saturday afternoon/evening, using lists from various sources that specify the proper channel numbers to try for. With that done, I finally have a nice list of channels, though as I go from one channel to another I get a nice "no signal" box when I'm pointed at Baltimore while tuned to a DC station (or vice versa).
There are still several stations I can't get -- it seems that our local UPNs (both Baltimore and DC) are in low power only mode, and not broadcasting very far with their signals. A big surprise is that I've not been able to tune in WETA, which broadcasts with plenty of power, and should be easily pulled in. I'm about 30 miles (give or take) from their towers, and I'm pretty sure pointed in the right direction (I did confirm it via signal strength meter), but never got above about 30% for their signal. Don't know for sure why (hoping perhaps someone else may have info on the HDTV signal power issues to comment on please!!)
On the plus side, I have a nice (rearranged things to do this) Samsung 17" flat tube monitor on my HTPC. The signals that do come in (the majors, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, local PBS, WB) are gorgeous. Crisp, sharp, and easy on my eyes. Compared to the poor signal quality of most of the VHF broadcasts of those same stations, it's night and day. The UHF stations were coming in nicely before, but look much crisper now too.
I watched some of the football game on FOX on Sunday on the FOX 780p hi-def broadcast. Very nice, though it still wasn't quite as sharp as I would have expected.
On the other hand, Monday nite football last nite was absolutely perfect. It was great to see a nice wide screen broadcast with very nice clarity.
I'm still very skeptical of the real "value" of upgrading to HDTV in the long run. Until the costs come way down, I don't see the sense in upgrading, as I really do get nice quality out of my DirecTV setup (which broadcasts the same "DT" versions of the channels I'm now getting on my HTPC, versus the crappy analog versions I was getting before using my over-the-air antenna setup on my TV).
I bought the ATI card on a whim, figuring it would be a nice toy, and would give me a cheap entry point to HDTV. I'm hoping to perhaps do some home brew recordings of stuff like Desperate Housewives and Lost, watch stuff like 24 live, and of course, want to be able to catch football games, and later (when the seasons starts again) be able to catch NASCAR races in HD. For now this seems to be a good way to get my feet wet, while not wasting a ton of money buying expensive equipment that will probably have to be replaced over time.
OH!!! One big important note here - the ATI HDTV Wonder card *only* works for over-the-air HDTV. It will not accept HD input (it has input for SVideo, and traditional RCA inputs for Video and L/R audio). It will NOT work for cable or satellite HDTV input. Again, *over* the air only. Do not plan on using the card with cable or satellite.
Hope this info is useful for anyone else considering such an approach. For the money, I like the ATI card, though the manual is pretty weak, support is a joke, and the included antenna is useful only for initial setup and testing if you don't don't use a powered amplifier of some sort.