HDTV
Yesterday a coworker forwarded me a link to the new ATI HDTV Wonder PCI card. This is the card I've been waiting for to get HDTV into my PC. The fact that there was a $50 rebate for cards purchased this week (making the card just $150, about half of what other cards cost) meant that I had to buy it right now. I got it over lunch.
It works as a general tuner, as well as a time shifting and DVR device (like a ReplayTV or TiVo). It's made by a company that I can sorta trust to do video right, and it's a single slot solution, which is important because I only had one slot left in my home theater PC.
My HDTV set is my monitor, so the setup is quite simple. Just plug it in, run their app, and watch TV in either a window or full screen. I'm usually watching TV through the picture-in-picture feature of my TV with the computer screen being the main image and the TV being a small image in the corner, so now I have more choices for the location of the TV image, and more options on its size. It also means that I don't have to switch my surround sound decoder from TV to PC when watching DVDs (which I play from my PC) or most HDTV content (still have to switch it when watching HDTV cable), so that means one less remote that I need to have out on the table. Very nice.
The quality seems first rate, and so far I haven't had any issues with the stability of the system, so I'm giving it a big two thumbs up, provisionally, until I have a chance to fully explore its DVR capabilities.
It works as a general tuner, as well as a time shifting and DVR device (like a ReplayTV or TiVo). It's made by a company that I can sorta trust to do video right, and it's a single slot solution, which is important because I only had one slot left in my home theater PC.
My HDTV set is my monitor, so the setup is quite simple. Just plug it in, run their app, and watch TV in either a window or full screen. I'm usually watching TV through the picture-in-picture feature of my TV with the computer screen being the main image and the TV being a small image in the corner, so now I have more choices for the location of the TV image, and more options on its size. It also means that I don't have to switch my surround sound decoder from TV to PC when watching DVDs (which I play from my PC) or most HDTV content (still have to switch it when watching HDTV cable), so that means one less remote that I need to have out on the table. Very nice.
The quality seems first rate, and so far I haven't had any issues with the stability of the system, so I'm giving it a big two thumbs up, provisionally, until I have a chance to fully explore its DVR capabilities.
posted by Mark at 9:10 AM
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