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All-in-Wonder (AIW) cards have been a long-standing favourite with PC TV enthusiasts because they offer a good mix of features including TV reception, Teletext, DVD playback, video capture and CD audio.
Based on ATI's Radeon 8500 chip running at a reduced clock speed (230MHz compared with the retail 8500's 275MHz) and with 64MB of DDR memory (running at 190MHz compared with 275MHz on the 8500) this card's performance should satisfy those who have in the past overlooked multifunction graphics cards because of their poor games performance.
As well as improved 3D capabilities the 8500 delivers improved DVD playback as well as enhanced quality digital recording and a wide range of available video codecs including mpeg-2.
Connection points
Unlike previous All-in-Wonders the 8500 is not available in PCI format. The AGP card has a DVI-I connector, and an adaptor is supplied so you can connect it to an analogue display.
In addition to the aerial connection the rear panel has connections for a redesigned breakout box, and a Firewire port. As with other AIW cards there's a lead that plugs into the line-in socket of your sound card.
The breakout box is designed with inputs along one edge and outputs along the other. Both sides have connectors for composite video and left and right audio channels, in addition to an S-Video port.
On the input side there's a second Firewire port and its opposite number on the output side is an S/PDIF socket for connection to a Dolby Digital AC-3 amp.
Remote control
The last new hardware addition is the remote control, an RF radio device that communicates via a small receiver plugged into a spare USB port. RF overcomes the line-of-sight limitation of infrared remotes, so you don't have to worry about positioning the receiver. You don't even have to be in the same room.
Installation and setup is relatively straightforward. The TV tuner is one of seven applications in the ATI multimedia suite, now in version 7.5. Channels are automatically assigned as favourites so they are included on the channel surfing list.
TV player
The TV player does more than just allow you to watch TV on your PC. First there's the TV on demand and digital VCR. The latter replicates the functions of a conventional VCR with one-touch recording, scheduled recording and all the other things you'd expect to do on a home VCR.
TV on demand takes advantage of the fact that you can play back video at any point without interrupting the recording, so you can pause live TV, then start playback from where you left off or watch the live broadcast in one window and the delayed one in another.
The available recording formats include mpeg-1 and mpeg-2, AVI, WMF and ATI's own VCR codec. The mpeg settings are fully customisable, so you can tweak the resolution, bit rate and IBP frame settings to produce the best results for your system.
For most people this is going to be the ATI codec, or low resolution mpeg-2. DVD quality 720 x 576 mpeg-2 may be on the menu, but even with a very fast CPU, there's no way you're going to be able to encode it at anything close to 25 frames per second (fps).
TV bar and blended desktop
Two other TV viewing features that we liked were the TV bar and blended desktop. The TV bar displays a miniature TV in the Internet Explorer bar so you can keep an eye on the football while web browsing.
The blended desktop reduces the opacity of the TV image and desktop and mixes the two. This includes any open application windows so you can work on a Word document with a full screen semi-transparent TV image behind it.
ATI's software DVD player is generally very good. Image quality of DVD playback was hard to fault, and the noise and slight blocking in shadow areas that were apparent in earlier versions of the player have been completely eliminated.
Seconds out
One glitch spoiled what was otherwise an impressive and enjoyable performance - the sound dropped out for a fraction of a second every 30 seconds or so when we used the S/PDIF out. This, combined with less than solid overall stability, suggests that work is still needed on the drivers for the AIW 8500DV to achieve its full potential.
Contact
ATI: 01628 480 200 www.ati.com
See also:
Nvidia's TI4600 and MX440 chipsets spearhead the new graphics generation. 20 Nov 2002
A Herculean graphics card for gaming and video editing. 24 Jul 2002
A superb graphics card boasting video recording, DVD movie playback and faster 3D games. 11 Feb 2002All Graphics Cards
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