ATI TV Wonder 200

CNET editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
  Detailed editors' rating
  Design : 0.0
  Features : 6.0
  Performance : 4.0
  Battery life : 0.0
  Service and support : 0.0
  Overall score: 5.0 (2.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Dan Ackerman
• Edited by:
  Matthew Elliott
• Reviewed on: 09/01/2006
• Released on: 08/21/2006

When the most expensive TV tuner cards can be found online for a reasonable $99 to $120, the need for a budget card may not be obvious. The $59 ATI TV Wonder 200 attempts to find a niche at the low end of the market, but with stripped-down specs and inferior hardware, all but the most casual users looking to add TV viewing and recording capabilities to their PC won't mind spending a little more to trade up.

The ATI TV Wonder 200 is a half-height PCI card that should fit into even small PC cases with ease. Connectivity is limited to a single coaxial input, plus an external connection block with composite, RCA audio, and S-Video connections. The card doesn't feature any sound-processing ability, forcing you to run a 1/8-inch audio cable (supplied) from an audio-out port on the ATI TV Wonder 200 to the line-in port on your PC or sound card.

The latest version of ATI's software, Catalyst Media Center, is cleanly designed and easy to navigate. While you can watch and record TV and access music and videos through it, there is no tab for photos, which keeps it from being a full substitute for Microsoft's Media Center Edition (MCE) OS. It does include a nice transcoding app that converts video files for use on, for example, a video iPod or the Sony PSP.

We were able to get a signal without a problem in Catalyst Media Center, but every time we clicked the Live TV button, there was a delay of several seconds--much longer than we're used to with MCE. Unfortunately, using the Windows interface isn't an option: MCE does not support the ATI TV Wonder 200. There are other programs, however, with which you can use the card, but they're hit-or-miss. We were able to use ArcSoft Total Media, a Media Center clone that does a great job mimicking the simple interface of MCE and adds some nice additional functionality, such as basic photo editing. But when we tried Beyond TV 4.0, which is listed as a supported program, we couldn't get it to recognize the card.

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Recent user reviews

• Average user rating: 1.5 stars out of 9 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars Write review

• Showing 3 of 9 user reviews

• 1.0 stars

  "this is my first computer. first time useing ATI.."

  by vincent welsh on May 18, 2007

• 3.0 stars

  "does the job"

  by topshooter187 on April 8, 2007

• 1.5 stars

  "it's kinda lame."

  by turkeyburger on March 22, 2007

• See all 9 user reviews Write review