ATI Tv Wonder Pro PCI

[universe74]

I friend reformatted his computer and has this card. He claims he had 2 sets of speakers, one plugged into the onboard and one into the ATI card, and got sound through both for normal windows operations. Is this possible? Can't seem to get it to work. Thanks much.

[Agustus]

I think those old cards came with an analog loop cable (male / male mini jack) that went from the output jack of the TV tuner card to the line-in jack of the sound card. Therefore, it would seem possible that just connecting amplified speakers directly to the TV tuner card would work.

Don’t know what to tell you about it not working now.

[universe74]

This is true, but that would only work using the TV audio I believe. The TV wonder pro or 200 doesn't have sound processing onboard and therefore can't produce windows sounds like a soundcard. Correct?

[Agustus]

Right however, if he had two sets of speakers one set connected to the sound card and one set connected to the TV tuner card he would hear everything he needed to hear albeit through different speakers (I think I have never tried this). I thought that this is what you were saying initially.

Ideally one would just use the cable and get all sound out of one set of speakers.

[universe74]

Yea. He claims both sets of speakers made the windows native sounds. I can't figure this one out.

[Agustus]

Well for what its worth I just ordered another TV Wonder 650 PCI card off of woot.com for ~$19.99. They also had the TV Wonder 600 PCIe for the same price. These cards have digital audio so there is no need for a mini jack male / male cable or connecting speakers directly to the card. They also should work fine in Windows 7 Media Center.

It might be a good time to move on to something else if you can find a good price.

[mikiem]

It might be a good time to move on to something else if you can find a good price.

My guess is with so many cable companies locking down QAM (setting protected flag), & ATSC OTA on PCs iffy depending on location, the market's dropping... Not long after Woot cleared out those cards Fry's had the 650 pci-e dual tuner, & most every day dealnews has listings of several brands of tuners (USB & internal) for cheap money. At the same time more people are moving to HD cable & using the DVR built into the box.

BTW & FWIW... meritline has some cheap ATSC antennas -- I paid ~$3 on sale -- and with the converter I have, the tiny things work as well as the amped antennae I bought for the 650 pre-QAM.