ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner

[yukit]

Perhaps this should be merged with a Vista thread, but it is interesting.

http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html

[Shoey Peachew]

According to this http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/11564 it seems like you have to jump over a lot of hurdles just to use it.

"OCUR, or Open Cable Unidirectional Receiver, a standard established by CableLabs and the cable industry for digital cable tuners."

"It needs OCUR support in the BIOS and support for HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection)."

"The PC must also be running one of the versions of Windows Vista—Home Premium or Ultimate—with built-in Media Center functionality."

"Media Center support for OCUR must then be activated with a code, much like Windows Vista activation."

"Once you have a TV Wonder and an OCUR-ready PC, the final step in setup will be installing the CableCard. AMD says this process involves making a call to the cable company, which will then dispatch a tech who will bring the CableCard to your house, install it, and enter a code to complete a pairing process that enables the device to tune cable TV."

"Sadly, the OCUR-compliant PC must come from a major PC manufacturer." Dell, HP, etc.

"The upgrade option will likely have a price in the $250-300 range"

[aloke]

I think that all the OCUR stuff is for use with cable ASTC broadcasts. Hopefully, this device will work witout all this requirement for (unencrypted) OTA broadcasts..?

[Agustus]

I was wondering when ATI / AMD would finally announce the production version of this OCUR product. Its been a hot topic in MCE forums for some time now.

Here is a link to an older article from when this device first tipped up with an early version of Vista. It looks as though it has lost a feature or two in the production version such as an RJ45 interface but perhaps that was just for the developers to interface with the product.

http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2662

[ATImeShifter]

Damn, just when I got my new 650 all set up and working properly, AMD announces a product that will effectively make it obsolete, since it has all of the 650's features plus HD cable/satellite support.

In the 650's favor, though, it's an internal card and thus less obtrusive, and is fully operable in XP MCE05, whereas this new device appears to only work under Vista, which may well ship w/o tuner support for the AIW cards that many of us have.

Plus, there's something to be said for having yet another set of tuners on hand. Assuming that AMD eventually comes out with tuner support for AIW cards in Vista, this will mean having 3 analog cable tuners, 3 analog OTA tuners, 2 digital OTA tuners, and 1 digital cable/satellite tuner. Of course, they won't all be usable at once, and would require a number of switches and amps. But still... ;-)

[aloke]

So, if one gets this, it will be able to display HDTV cable feeds (negating the need for a cable box). Will the cable company charge extra for the extra CableCard (I'll have one in my living room with the TV etc, and one in my den with my PC)? My guess is: Yes.