HDTV Wonder Discussion

[PGHammer]

Originally Posted by tristancarton

Gary,
Guide Plus doesn't support the hdtv portion of the hdtv wonder right now. I do believe that windows media center 2005 does though.(supposedly mce 2005 works much better than mmc at support and picture of the hdtv wonder)

For some odd reason ati has yet to implement the software downmixing options for 6 speaker systems. I would guess they just don't want to spend money on each dd5.1 decoder license they would have to implement with this. If your soundcard supports dd hardware decoding you can pasthrough to it and have the soundcard downmix.(that is what i do with my cards) Although I have to turn my dx sound acc to basic to get the passthrough to work right. If it doesn't you are stuck with dolby pro logic.

MEC 2K5's guide *does* work with the HDTV Wonder (personally tested and proven). It takes a modified version of the ATI MCE Software Decode Kit to use an HDTV Wonder and an AIW in the same system, though (stop by http://www.xpmce.com for details and several posts from me on the subject).

Regardless of which Windows XP I've run, I've always had my A2ZS handle all DD decoding chores (speakers are Creative Inspire 5300s). In fact, after I buy a *much* bigger HD, I'll be putting MCE 2K5 back on this box (I went temporarily back to XP Pro SP2 for other reasons, not because of any issues with MCE 2K5 itself). My big quibble (yes, I said *quibble*) is t6hat there is no way to detect a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal is present in either Media Center or ATI's DTV (or even in ATI DVD for that matter).

[LegolasX21E]

Thanks Tristan and Grog, I guess im gonna need a new mobo processor combo. Any suggestions for a good mobo CPU combo for the HDTV Wonder? Spending $200 max

[tristancarton]

you are going to have to buy a cpu/motherboard/memory combo due to most of the newer processor not using sdram.(what your celeron uses)

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/4296754
and then this
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...146-219&depa=0

this is a good deal on a cheap upgrade.

Originally Posted by LegolasX21E

Thanks Tristan and Grog, I guess im gonna need a new mobo processor combo. Any suggestions for a good mobo CPU combo for the HDTV Wonder? Spending $200 max

[PoolShark]

I shouldn't have reinstalled, because now the analog TV will not start.

I really only want to use it for analog signal however every time I have it somewhat installed I go to run the TV program and it says that it's "UNABLE TO START TV" I had it running a while back before the fresh install.

in the settings it has a tab that allows you to select your capture source however it comes out as "No Default" and Driver "unsupported" which after I've tried almost everything on ATI's website I haven't had any luck. Their website says that it's a Multimedia Setup Problem that I was to uninstall their software and reinstall it but that does nothing. It doesn't seem to see the capture card in their software. But it has installed all 5 devices that it should in the hardware devices with no apparent errors. I've moved the PCI cards around, attempted reinstalling software drivers and MB BIOS is up to date. Nothing has worked so far. I'm just throwing this out here to see if anyone else has ever had this problem and could help.

edit: I've tried MMC 9.0 - 9.03

[digital_one]

Same thing is happening on a freshly new XP install, the analog WDM capture is not showing up in the configuration, but is showing fine (no yellow question marks) in the Device Manager. Digital Tuner works.
This is with the WHQL 4.12 Catalyst, before I had the Beta 4.12 and it was working fine.

[PoolShark]

^^

I've seen a few posts in this thread and forum concerning this, but no solutions. Hopefully someone will share.

[grog]

Go into the device manager and delete the items.
On reboot the items should be found and configured as required.

Greg

Originally Posted by digital_one

Same thing is happening on a freshly new XP install, the analog WDM capture is not showing up in the configuration, but is showing fine (no yellow question marks) in the Device Manager. Digital Tuner works.
This is with the WHQL 4.12 Catalyst, before I had the Beta 4.12 and it was working fine.

[digital_one]

Originally Posted by grog

Go into the device manager and delete the items.
On reboot the items should be found and configured as required.

Greg

Yes in device manager they are found and are working, but not in any analog capture software (virtualdub, etc). Also in MMC configuration TV, TV capture source only option is NO default Driver (unsupported).

[Inkog]

add this entry to your path variable:

;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Drivers

your TV should start fine after this, provided the drivers are installed properly.

[PoolShark]

Its odd that when running File Monitor to try and debug this:

MMc will look for varius driver componets and report them not found. These driver componets are right where they should be. I have no idea why MMC can't find them. I also have no idea why on a fresh install with everything up to date this would happen. Perhaps I will just whipe it again and start fresh.

[SpecTP]

I ran into this problem as well. I haven't figured out what's causing it except that I did narrow it down to some conflict with XP SP2. I've deleted my OS partition and reinstalled XP over a dozen time to try and isolate the problem. I've settled on using XP SP1 and 9.03. Maybe when I get a few days free, I'll try reinstalling SP2 and try to see if the tv tuner will still work. In any case, try not installing SP2.

Originally Posted by PoolShark

I shouldn't have reinstalled, because now the analog TV will not start.

I really only want to use it for analog signal however every time I have it somewhat installed I go to run the TV program and it says that it's "UNABLE TO START TV" I had it running a while back before the fresh install.

in the settings it has a tab that allows you to select your capture source however it comes out as "No Default" and Driver "unsupported" which after I've tried almost everything on ATI's website I haven't had any luck. Their website says that it's a Multimedia Setup Problem that I was to uninstall their software and reinstall it but that does nothing. It doesn't seem to see the capture card in their software. But it has installed all 5 devices that it should in the hardware devices with no apparent errors. I've moved the PCI cards around, attempted reinstalling software drivers and MB BIOS is up to date. Nothing has worked so far. I'm just throwing this out here to see if anyone else has ever had this problem and could help.

edit: I've tried MMC 9.0 - 9.03

[digital_one]

This worked for me for MMC 9.03 Analog Capture,

Path :

;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Drivers

Thanks

[atiisasob]

Originally Posted by PoolShark

I shouldn't have reinstalled, because now the analog TV will not start.

I really only want to use it for analog signal however every time I have it somewhat installed I go to run the TV program and it says that it's "UNABLE TO START TV" I had it running a while back before the fresh install.

in the settings it has a tab that allows you to select your capture source however it comes out as "No Default" and Driver "unsupported" which after I've tried almost everything on ATI's website I haven't had any luck. Their website says that it's a Multimedia Setup Problem that I was to uninstall their software and reinstall it but that does nothing. It doesn't seem to see the capture card in their software. But it has installed all 5 devices that it should in the hardware devices with no apparent errors. I've moved the PCI cards around, attempted reinstalling software drivers and MB BIOS is up to date. Nothing has worked so far. I'm just throwing this out here to see if anyone else has ever had this problem and could help.

edit: I've tried MMC 9.0 - 9.03

PoolShark, I noticed that you ran into the same exact problems as I have with this HDTV wonder card.
I have an X800 Pro built by Ati card with the newest 4.12 drivers. After installing each new Hdtv wonder driver in order, i can only get the DTV to work and not the analog. I receive the same message as you when trying to open TV.
Also, i used to be able to receive channels 7-1 and 7-2 which are the ABC afilliates in my area (S.F.) This is the only channel that doesn't come through.
After doing Ati's pc-check, it thinks that i dont have a Radeon card installed, and that direct x 9.0 is not installed correctly. Wierd as hell. This is with a clean install of XP and all updates.

MSI K8N Neo 2 Plat, Athlon 3200+ @ 2.4, 2 X 256 OCZ REV 2, X800 Pro, 200GB Maxtor SATA

Is this a driver issue with the Nvidia chipset? I noticed that when installing Nvidias IDE drivers, these caused error messages when starting DTV and also with DVD playback. Avoiding installing these eliminated these problems. BTW, i installed this card with another MSI 939 board, Via K8t Neo 2 FIR. Everything worked fine on this board. Kinda sux cause the Nforce chipset killed Vias in so many benchmarks on a number of reviews which is why i made the switch.
So i was hoping that there may be a solution if anyone has encountered these probs on a similar rig. I would also like to know if the path variable entry solved these issues.

[banshee740]

Can I have both cards installed at the same time?

I love the HDTV Wonder after reading several posts with screenshots. However I would also like to have a card that supports Dscaler for regular TV.

[digital_one]

Originally Posted by ttriplett

Poolshark, I have the same problem with my local PBS which I think is 1080i. It used to work fine but I think my problem started when I upgraded to the lastest drivers/software off the ATI website.

Guys, could this be a decoder problem?

Same problem here in south florida with the PBS station, I get 91% signal strength but no video or audio. I think it has to do with the station PSIP.

[ttriplett]

Originally Posted by digital_one

Same problem here in south florida with the PBS station, I get 91% signal strength but no video or audio. I think it has to do with the station PSIP.

You may be right. Did yours used to work and then stop? Can you receive other channels that multicast besides PBS?

[digital_one]

Yes I can receive other channels including local PBS in West Palm Beach, but the PBS from Miami has this problem. I kind of solved this, the station remaps the channel as 2-1,2-2,2-3,and 2-4 when I do a scan, but if I do a add a new channel and choose the 18 (which is the real channel frequency according to http://www.hdtvpub.com) the signal is excellent with 91% strength.
Other people in avsforum get the channel ok with an OTA Receiver, it has to be the way they map the channel.
This is the first since I put an outside antenna to get the Miami station since I'm in West Palm Beach.

I can only enter manually 18-1, but I don't know how to make 18-2,18-3 and 18-3. I tried playing with the windows registry entry of ATI Multimedia but with no luck.

[PoolShark]

In regard to all my problems:

"No 1080i channels" has been solved by kicking my pc. I have informed ATI of this fix, and expect it to show up in their knowledge base shortly.

"No analog TV" has been solved by ATI HDTV Guru "Grog"

As for the " DMA Warning Box" it will not go away <= Please help

[jliger99]

Can someone recommend an indoor HDTV antenna? I'm one of the lucky ones, in that the hardware and software seem to be working well for me. My problem is that I can't seem to get ANY signal for the DTV whatsoever (analog works great).

I suspect an amplified antenna would probably work well...

[Monte]

I installed the HDTV Wonder into a new XP Pro machine. Had the DTV could not initialze problem. I did the instructions on the website to install that one program first and then the others and now it works.

So far when I run DTV it is always recording for the live television pausing feature. So far I tried it with 9.01 which came on the CD. Is there a way to disable that if newer versions don't change that automatically? I don't need to have a constant recording stream. I just want to watch stuff and record when I want to record.

BTW I am running it on my Shuttle mini computer on a get this
AMD 650MHZ CPU
256MB RAM
On Board Pro Savage video card with 32 MB of video RAM that is shared with system RAM
Also an ancient 2GB WD hard drive.

So it runs on old stuff. just choppy

[tristancarton]

wow. you actually are getting decent watchable high def with a 650 mhz cpu, onboard videocard, and 256 of ram?

about the constant recording stream. no you can't disable it at the current point in ati's drivers and no one has figured out to "hack" disable it yet. however you can turn it down to only 5 minutes in the initialization menu. you aren't the only one complaining about this however it may fall on deaf ears at ati due to the way they implemented the decoding in this product.(software with a delay as opposed to hardware realtime)

[Monte]

I'm only getting free over the air stuff so I have to wait for something good to come on to actually see if it's decent. Right now only 480i stuff is airing. I'll see if setting to 5minutes helps because there's no room on the 2gb drive. But it works and that's the big thing.

I just tried 9.03 and no good.

[Monte]

Okay what a hassle. I tried going back to 9.01 and DTV didn't work. I tried a lot of stuff, but probably the one thing that would have worked. I reinstalled XP+SP1 and got it all installed and still didn't work. Then I reinstalled DTV Decoder or whatever it was on the faq. Not the first method, but the second one. Weird how I had to do it a different way on the same machine.

So now I got it back to working here's what I found out. Only the 480i channels show up. The other channels I can hear and record. The 480i channels look about as good as my AIW 9600xt. The Analog tuner looks maybe as good as my USB 2.0 Wonder. Neither are as good as my AIW. I can record the 1080 and 720 channels and watch the recordings, but they are choppy as hell. So my attempt to make just something to watch HDTV didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. I'm guessing putting in a DirectX 9 compliant video card and faster CPU would fix it all, but well that's not the point.

[nanjil3]

hello:

I checked my installation and foudn that I had all teh requirements (i.e latest hdtv decoder etc) for mmc 9.03. So I installed 9.03 wihtout uninstalling 9.02. This time 9.03 installed wihtout complaining and without forcing me uninstall 9.02 first! huuray!! yes ?!!

Now problems. The dtv splash screen still said 9.02. (while regular tv splashed 9.03). But then I found this new digital video recorder tab under settings. However only one setting "native" seemed to work "properly" if at all. If I switch to any other settings I get garbage noise for sound. Even the "native" recodings ply only the ati player. The windows media player plays it for a while and crashes.

did anybody see this? In thsi case I rather wish I had kept the 9.02 (knowing ati I am sure I won't be able to go back!)

[grog]

DTV should show 9.03 as well.



Greg

Originally Posted by nanjil3

hello:

I checked my installation and foudn that I had all teh requirements (i.e latest hdtv decoder etc) for mmc 9.03. So I installed 9.03 wihtout uninstalling 9.02. This time 9.03 installed wihtout complaining and without forcing me uninstall 9.02 first! huuray!! yes ?!!

Now problems. The dtv splash screen still said 9.02. (while regular tv splashed 9.03). But then I found this new digital video recorder tab under settings. However only one setting "native" seemed to work "properly" if at all. If I switch to any other settings I get garbage noise for sound. Even the "native" recodings ply only the ati player. The windows media player plays it for a while and crashes.

did anybody see this? In thsi case I rather wish I had kept the 9.02 (knowing ati I am sure I won't be able to go back!)

[Monte]

So I put the card into my Windows 2000 computer. I installed the drivers and reinstalled 9.03 Everything ran, but DTV could not scan the channels. Crashed everytime about 30% of the way through. Installed 9.01 from the CD and everything works. Not sure what the big difference between the two are. I'll probably try 9.02 later.

So far I'd say the quality is okay. My AIW is pretty good so the HDTV shows I have seen so far aren't really worth the small upgrade in quality. I'm using the antenna and not a dish or anything fancy. Jeopardy in DTV isn't any more exciting.

[Monte]

9.02 seems to work. Getting the bug where the DTV control shows the wrong one. IE the windowed mode control shows in Full screen mode and vice versa.

Getting jerky video, but that appears to be due to getting at best 66% signal strength 99% of the time. Might help with a better antenna.

[jliger99]

Originally Posted by jliger99

Can someone recommend an indoor HDTV antenna? I'm one of the lucky ones, in that the hardware and software seem to be working well for me. My problem is that I can't seem to get ANY signal for the DTV whatsoever (analog works great).

I suspect an amplified antenna would probably work well...

Never mind. I went to www.antenna.org, and it turns out that I need a roof-mounted antenna where I live, so until I can convince my wife, I'm left with just the analog...

[terpfan1980]

Somehow during installation or soon after, I found a way to turn off "TV on demand" for my HDTV Wonder.

I'd like to go back and turn it back on, as I resolved the earlier problems (signal strength wasn't high enough) that were keeping me from getting stutter free HDTV on my system.

How do I get TV-on-demand streaming enabled again?


Also, I think I know the answer to this (which should become part of an FAQ at ATI's site darn-it!), but is there no way to use the "Whats on now" feature with the HDTV wonder because the Guide+ data doesn't work for the HDTV wonder?

I saw the earlier note about MCE's guide data working, and may go that route, but wasn't sure about that either.

[grog]

You could try my cheap method.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost...&postcount=274

Greg

Originally Posted by jliger99

Never mind. I went to www.antenna.org, and it turns out that I need a roof-mounted antenna where I live, so until I can convince my wife, I'm left with just the analog...