Remote access to ATSC machine needed

[dvasco]

I was hoping GBPVR was going to be a solution for them.

[sub]

When it comes to analog devices like PVR150s and ATI 550 Pros, there are a lot of differences - things like the quality of the MPEG2 encoding chipset, video filtering, the video decoder chip used etc.

When it comes to digital devices, these cards produced pretty much identical results. They're all just capturing the digital bitstream sent by the broadcaster. The most significant difference between these devices is how good the on-board tuner is at locking on to signals, and the quality of the software they come with.

That said, there is something funny going on with the ATI HDTV Wonder. I dont really understand the problem yet, but it seems to be either having problems locking on the signal, or is not passing the transport stream on correctly. It may just be something minor, but not really sure yet. I'll need to spend some more time on one of these machines investigating.

[daphatty]

That said, there is something funny going on with the ATI HDTV Wonder. I dont really understand the problem yet, but it seems to be either having problems locking on the signal, or is not passing the transport stream on correctly. It may just be something minor, but not really sure yet. I'll need to spend some more time on one of these machines investigating.

When you figure out the problem please let us know. You are in a rather unique position to truly understand why the ATI card is so finicky.

The main reason I didn't buy the ATI card is because it was so "hit and miss." The complaints by users at the AVS forums basically convinced me to pass. I was already leary because the HDTV Wonder was the first of its kind here in the US. That's not to say the Fusion 5 or Avermedia don't have their quirks, but they are much better at tuning HD signals than most other cards on the market.

[dvasco]

http://www.pcalchemy.com has the the Avermedia A180 for $69.00

[rwmech]

http://www.pcalchemy.com has the the Avermedia A180 for $69.00

FWIW I was able to get a NEW Technisat Air2PC card from Ebay with BDA drivers for only $39.99 INCLUDING shipping. I have a modest PC and a modest budget (read my tagline) and I'm running HDTV through mine with Sub's help and patches in this thread.

I dont know if others have had problems with the card, but I have so far had some fairly good success. The only problem I saw with this card is that it does ATSC and not QAM but from what I understand for OTA it's not a huge issue.

[daphatty]

Sub, I resolved the issue I reported earlier and have been able to test HD playback (using patch v.4). I don't know what you did but I've noticed a considerable performance improvement. I'm going to apply the most recent patch (v.5) and continue testing.

[sub]

Great. Let me know how you get on.

[pastro]

Sub,
Not sure if you are still looking for input on the ATI HDTV Wonder but I'll add my two cents. I put one in our MCE test system and I don't get any channels from the scan. With MCE I get about five working stations.

[daphatty]

Well, after getting over the fact that uninstalling VA also deleted over 400GBs worth of shows (grumble... grumble...), I was able to play around with the latest patch. The scan feature worked perfectly, as expected, as did recording using the DVR-MS BDA multiplexer setting.

[sub]

Sub,
Not sure if you are still looking for input on the ATI HDTV Wonder but I'll add my two cents. I put one in our MCE test system and I don't get any channels from the scan. With MCE I get about five working stations.

Thanks for the info. There seems to be a bit of a common theme here - scan finds no channels on ATI HDTV Wonder, works fine with other cards. Lonegeek has offered to let me have a remote look, so I'll see if I can work it out