ATI Radeon X1300 All-In-Wonder 2006 Edition (256MB, PCI)

Pros: Installation went smoothly

Cons: Bad video quality, aspect ratio problems, bad UI responsiveness

Summary: I have been a long time user of the All-in-wonder Radeon 7500 card on my 4 year old P4 1.4GHz machine. It performed incredibly well on my Dell 2405FPW monitor, so I had no need for my regular tv while was working on the computer (about 90% of the time). When I built my new computer, finding a good replacement TV card was a high priority. I was not big on the idea of buying a highly priced all-in-wonder every time I upgraded, but all the reviews for the regular ATI tv cards seemed to be pretty abysmal. Since I was only looking for the tv features and was not going to be doing much or any gaming (I still needed a PCIe graphics card, however), I thought this AIW 2006 edition card was exactly what I needed. However, I was very disappointed from the moment I brought up the MMC TV. The quality of the video from either the RF signal or composite video was just awful. Moreover, the window was coming up in an incorrect aspect ratio. It was in a wide screen format and stretching the picture. And selecting any of the aspect ratio options didn't do anything to the window. Somewhere in the general card settings, I found an option to select "I have a wide-screen monitor," but checking this made the window come up in more of a square proportions. In order to correct this, I had to select a non-fixed ratio and resize the window manually everytime I loaded the program. Accessing the popup menu would take over a second to display, and moving windows around on the screen was very slow and caused the video to jitter. In the MMC, they also removed the ability to turn off the DVR functionality, which I didn't need anyways because I was already using a tivo.

All I want is a card that can put a decent picture of my TV feed to the screen. Why is it that my 4 year old machine (P4 1.4GHz, 640MB) with a much older TV card can do a much better job of this than my new souped up machine (Athlon X2 4200+, 2GB, Raptor150, ...). Technology seems to be going backwards. I am sending this card back and taking the restocking fee.