Adds "All-in-Wonder" features to (almost) any video card
Pros: Adds most of the features of the ATI All In Wonder (Pro) to almost any video card. Compatible with "WebTV for Windows" feature of Windows 98.
Cons: The TV Wonder doesn't work with cards that don't support Overlay functions. According to ATI (and confirmed by the Chips page of the The Almost Definitive FOURCC Definition List), this includes the Matrox Millenium and Matrox Mystique. These cards do not support overlays but instead support off screen YUV surfaces and BitBlt functions that can do color space conversion. No software updates publicly available, more than a year after the product's release. No TV output.
We tested the TV Wonder on a computer with a TNT2 Vanta graphics card running Windows 98 Second Edition. We had some problems with the software freezing up, usually just after we started a video capture, but sometimes, it froze after several of minutes of video had been captured, causing us to lose the work. We encountered similar results with a different graphics card, based on an older nVIDIA TNT chip. We went looking for software updates, but none were available in the public areas of ATI's site. Imagine our surprise when we looked in the Press Lounge area (where you need a journalists-only password to gain access), and found an update that addressed our problems. Why ATI has been slow to release this update to the general public is inexplicable.
When the capture works, the results were good, although the manual's information was unclear as to how to set up the card to capture audio. It took three people a half an hour of head-scratching to get audio captures to work correctly. We were, however, disappointed that the card lacks TV or composite video output. For this reason, and the software hassles we encountered, we are less impressed with this product than with its full-blown "All in Wonder" cousins, that also include graphics card capabilities.
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