I’m thinking about getting the ALL-IN-WONDER® 128 Graphics card and wondered if anyone had any experience with it. Does it perform as advertised? Can I run Cable(TV) into my comp and then hook up my comp to my TV?
I guess it’s really just going to be a toy so I can make some movies with analog video watch some TV on it. Thanks for any feedback!
Don’t get an AIW if you want just a TV card. It’s a full featured graphics card. If you ONLY want TV card capabilities, and already have a video card, get a TV Wonder. BTW, the 3D Capabilities of the AIW 128 are just horrendous. If you want to play games, get an AIW Radeon 9000ish card.
IMHO, the Rage 128 line of controllers from ATI was one of the primarly causes of NVIDIA’s rise to market dominance. Bad drivers, horrible quality TV output, incompatibility with certain software, it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
But the All-In-Wonder idea is sound, and the radiion-based cards perform fine.
-lv
I have this one, the 7500. It’s OK, but I would probably buy a different brand if I wanted a new one. I have heard ATI drivers suck, but I don’t know how or why since I don’t know much about drivers. The remote works only sometimes, I don’t know why. It isn’t hard to change the channels manually, so I haven’t tried hard to make it work.
The software sucks. Sometimes I can record fine, but there is one program, no matter how hard I try, it won’t record. Other shows record OK, but sometimes the playback is funky - I think this has to do with if I’m doing anything else on my computer at the time - it gets choppy. A few times though, I haven’t been doing anything on my computer and playback is still choppy.
I have my cable hooked up, no problem there. I have a cable modem and the line is already run into the back of my computer - you will need a splitter if you have a cable modem. Get a heavy duty one, the dinky thing from Radio Shack I was using had some problems, my internet connection was dropping and the cable guy came out and replace my splitter with a better one.
Watching TV is easy, the picture isn’t the greatest, especially at full screen.
Overall, I think thereare better cards out there, I didn’t have time to research my purchase much (OK - it was an impulse buy) but it is better than the video card that came with my computer by a long shot. I was having some serious refresh rate issues with the OEM card.
Well, I’m not looking for ONLY TV, but I also don’t play a lot of games. Would I be better off getting just the TV card?
Thanks for responses guys!
My recommendation would be to stay miles away from the AIW 128, but the other cards in the AIW series aren’t bad. Especially if you don’t want games, but are otherwise in the market for a video card, one of the older Radeons will do well.
I would just go with the TV Wonder card. Why buy a card that does everything half-assed when you can get a good dedicated TV card for cheap, and a good 3D card for cheap later, should you wish it?
I used to have an AIW128 card and I was satisfied with it, kinda. I eventually realized that it was a pain in the ass to have to boot the computer when I wanted to watch TV, and when I wanted to capture video for editing, I needed a more advanced card (I eventually got the Pinnacle DV500+). I gave the AIW128 to my sister and put an ATI 7500 in my machine and put a standard television on my desk beside my monitors.
I have a couple of AIWs, the older ones, but they do require the tv to be on before you turn on the computer…
I think that Bestbuy.com has a AIW 8500 at 169.00 or better at the moment. It should do TIVO. but ebay.com has plenty of their old cards for cheap.
I recently got the All in Wonder Radeon 7500. It’s exactly the same as the 8500 except the 8500 has 128 megs of memory and the 7500 has 64 megs of memory.
However, I got the 7500 for $120. The 8500 goes for something like $300! Seemed like a good deal to me. Why be right on the cutting edge, unless you are really heavy into multi-player 3D gaming?
Anyway, the drivers do have a reputation for sucking, and mine sure seems to. I have games and video crash all the time, windows XP error report thing says it’s my ATI driver. I am trying to get it fixed, but not having much luck. I installed the latest version of the driver, but no change.
I borrowed a friend’s All In Wonder 128 card once while trying to figure out what brand of capture card I wanted. I understand that it’s a combo graphics/TV card, but I really just wanted to see what ATI cards were capable of.
After spending countless hours over a period of a month trying to get the damn thing to work right with Windows 2000, I finally gave up and returned the card to my friend.
If you’re not really into gaming, you’ll save yourself a lot of money by simply buying a regular TV card. Hauppauge makes some decent cards. Really, any BT878 TV card will offer pretty good quality. There’s not much difference between a $40 TV card and a $100 card.
Also note that if you do get an ATI card (even the TV Wonder, if I’m not mistaken), you’ll have to use ATI’s proprietary MMC software to capture. Most other cards are compatible with a wide variety of shareware and freeeware capture programs, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your needs.
And, since you mentioned video capture, here’s the obligatory link to vcdhelp.com.
It sounds like what I’m looking for is a TV card then. I don’t do a whole lot of gaming and don’t really see the need. I just kind of figured, “Hey, more power and functions = GOOD!” It’s true with the engine I just built, so why not my computer too ;).
Appreciate all the info, now I think I know what I want.
The 7500 is not “exactly the same” as the 8500 – there are significant differences over and above the amount of RAM on the card. Here is a link to an excellent article that describes both cards.
I personally like the AIW series, and would recommend that you step up from the AIW 128.
FTR, I had my Radeon VIVO (Video In/Video Out) working with VirtualDub just fine. I think it might have taken some mucking around with drivers to get to work right, however.
Not even close to true. I’m currently watching TV on my TVWonder using Showshifter (www.showshifter.com), as well as recording TIVO style with it. It works great, much better than the ATI software, which sucks, hard.
Fair enough. I’ve been misinformed. Having been put off by my bad experiences borrowing one, I’ve never actually owned an ATI card, so I haven’t delved into the issue too deeply.
I saw 8500 on bestbuy.com $169 -$20 rebate -10% off coupon (usually in a magazine like Maxim)…
Be sure whatever one you buy has the operating system mentioned on the box that matches yours.
I had an All-in-Wonder for a week, and then I returned it to Best Buy. (side note: As much as many folks dislike Best Buy, at least they don’t have a restocking fee like CompUSA does 
).
I had the same choppy video problem that others have reported. I expect a TIVO-style system to seamlessly go from live video to playback without any loss in quality – I was sorely disappointed. I think that my machine should handle real-time video well (1.4ghz, 384mb, separate 40mb HD for video). Unfortunately, I still got ho-hum results. Not worth my $$$ at all.
The final thing that I found displeasing was the fact that their customer support line was somewhere in Canada, and I never was able to get through to a live person.
To be fair, I always felt that there was some magic setting that was incorrect. Unfortunately, their help was insufficient, and their phone support (crucial for low-level driver and hardware issues) just sucked.
After I crossed my annoyance threshold, I yanked the card and went back to BB.
I would say that this isn’t a problem with the card, it’s just the limitations of technology. You can easily record TV quality video onto your hard drive (perhaps not with ATI’s software, I don’t use it, so I don’t know), with a MUCH slower computer than you can record compressed video. The problem is, if you record uncompressed, it’s going to take something like 10mb/second of hard drive space. It’s completely not worth it, when you can lose a bit of quality and use 100k/second, or less.
Also, ATI’s support is in Canada because they’re a Canadian company.
Oh, and regarding ATI’s video capture, don’t expect the highest quality video in the world.
A video that played well on my TV (no tracking static on the top/bottom of the screen, no snow) had major tracking(like) streaking at the top and bottom, and the picture was just generally very…not quite poor, but below-average. I had better results with my “control-group” commercial video tape (Dirty Work, IIRC). YMMV.