Watching TV on you computer seems to have become an extremely popular concept. The idea of no longer needing to feed the VCR with tapes that inevitably degrade is a nice thing. This is where a TV-tuner comes into play. With some well written software, you can easily setup a HTPC that will replace multiple components in your system. Finding a good quality TV-tuner to start the project off with can be difficult with the number of choices available.

This is where ATI comes in to hopefully slim the field a bit. With a barrage of built in features, the Theater 550 Pro controller chip looks on paper to be a winner. Built in MPEG-2 encoder, 2D and 3D comb filter, noise reduction and audio/video synchronization makes one all in one TV-tuner card. So let's take a closer look.

Specifications

System Requirements: •  Intel® Pentium® 4 or Celeron®, AMD Athlon® or Sempron® (or compatible) •  128 MB of system memory; 256 MB or more is recommended for best performance •  Sound Card and speakers •  Motherboard with available PCI slot •  Cable TV signal or amplified antenna •  Installation software requires CD-ROM drive Operating System Support •  Windows® XP (Professional or Home, Service Pack 2) •  Windows® XP Media Center Edition® 2005 TV Tuner Requirements TV signal from amplified antenna or cable. Versions available for: •  NTSC ( North America )

Compatibility •  TV WONDER™ ELITE is compatible with all high quality graphics sub-systems supporting DirectX® overlay, including products from the following manufacturers: ATI NVIDIA Requires Graphics card and SVGA monitor capable of 1024 x 768 @ 32-bit resolution •  An ATI RADEON® 9600 or newer graphics card is recommended for optimal display output quality. Warranty •  3-year limited

ATI TV Wonder Elite

The TV Wonder Elite comes in one of the neatest packages that I have seen in a long time. The package is in the shape of an old film canister. Once you open the case you will find: TV Wonder Elite, Manual w/driver CD, Remote Wonder Plus, Composite Cable, and a S-Video Cable.

Editor's Note - March 17, 2005: Just to let all of you know that the film canister box, and THEATER 550 PRO DVD package were reviewer only items. For the actual packaging, please take a look at the gallery section for the product at ATI's site.

Basically everything you need to get started with. The card itself has a few features to point out. The main thing to point out is dead center on the purple PCB based card, the Theater 550 Pro chip. The main features of this chip will be covered later on. One thing to note that is missing from anywhere on the card is a heat sink, this goes to the efficient design of the card.

The ATI TV Wonder Elite includes 16Mb of 128Mbit GDDR SDRAM which is rated at 250 MHz. This will help with the onboard MPEG-2 encoding, allowing the card to cache information onboard, instead of having to transfer the data bits through the system bus. This will increase performance.

Shown below is the back of the TV Wonder Elite. The back has two connections, one coaxial connection for the fm tuner, and one coaxial connection for the TV feed. The other connection is for the ATI break out box. The ATI breakout box includes connections for: S-Video, Composite, and two RCA connections for audio input.

The last item included in the box is the new and improved Remote Wonder Plus. The redesign of the popular remote control is now thinner. The slimmer design fits in your hand a bit better, and puts all of the buttons right at your thumb. Once again the 8-directional pad returns for full mouse control from up to 60-feet away. The base has also been redesigned to be a box with a small wire antenna as compared to the round saucer base from before.

Technology
Getting video into your computer is no simple task. To you, you never notice, everything is done in the background. On the computers end, it goes through at least 8 steps which are shown below:

This system works like mathematical calculations, you result can only be as accurate as your most inaccurate number. Like this, your image quality can only be as good as your worst performing step. If only one of these steps is not up to par, your perfect incoming image turns up being a botched and unimpressive. ATI has recently released a new version of their Theater line of video processors. The newest model is the Theater 550 Pro. The Theater 550 Pro is a multitude of features bundled into chip. ATI has squeezed an audio/video decoder, MPEG-2 encoder, hardware 3D comb filter, hardware noise reduction, digital inter-frequency demodulation and digital audio processing. All of the video processing is done on the one chip, so overhead is cut, and performance is increased. Each piece is also specifically designed to work together, so there is no piecing together of multiple components to make a system. ATI has a demo of how everything works at their Theater 550 site.

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