ATI-TV TV Tuner and Video
Capture Board
Last updated 3/23/99
OPERATION. The ATI software and the seamless
integration of the ATI-TV with the MS NetMeeting and the Win 98 Web TV applications
really make this board. The impression is a well-engineered hardware/software
product.
 The
ATI video player, shown to the right, is multi-function user interface. The
Task Control Panel along the top of the player switches the player between
its various modes:
- Media Player - plays
MPEG and AVI video files.
- TV - controls
and displays live video from input devices plugged into the back of the
card, such
as your Cable TV, VCR, and camcorder.
- Capture - Captures
still images.
The PAL version of the ATI-TV
(European, etc. TV standard) has an additional Teletext mode.
Each mode pops-up
a different control panel. These control panels have so many functions I cannot
begin to cover all them in this review. However, for example here's
a picture of the TV control panel showing some of AT-TV's capabilities:
You can do all sorts of things with
the display. Change
the size of the window, expand it to full screen, zoom-in on part of
the picture designated with your mouse, etc. The list goes on. I
agree with ATI; the ATI-TV makes you computer into an "intelligent TV
set."
Functions not shown above include
the display of a matrix of thumbnail pictures of all of the channels which
are being
scanned --somewhat like a video police scanner except you see little
pictures--and from which you pick the channel you want to see. The
Setup will autoscan the cable and automatically set-up all of the channels
on the cable--up to 125 of them. You can than rearrange them, set new
channel numbers, name them, lock-out channels and assign a password to them,
etc. You can even set-up the ATI-TV to detect words in the TV closed
caption text. This feature can be set so it maximizes the TV window/starts
saving a transcript of the text when it detects words matching your criteria;
however, screening capabilities are limited to rudimentary criteria.
The video capture panel allows you
to grab still frames, capture full motion video and sound, sequences of
still frames
without audio, or just audio. Frames can be saved as clipboard files
and then pasted into most paint/photo programs. The rest can be saved
as AVI files for future playback/manipulation or for sending to friend as
an attachment to E-mail. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that
frames captured from a Sony SteadyShot WP-F750 camcorder look as good
as the pictures taken with a Sony MVC-FD7 digital camera. (They actually
look better than the parrot shown above, which was resampled and optimized
for the Internet.)
Finally, the ATI-TV fits almost seamlessly
with MicroSoft's Web TV for Windows 98 and NetMeeting. I simply fired-up
both applications and found the ATI-TV waiting to be selected as the video
source. Both programs ran flawlessly. NetMeeting converted the
ATI-TV, with a camcorder plugged into it, into an instant, high-quality videoconference
camera, and with all the functions you would find from a dedicated videoconference
camera. I didn't explore Web TV very much, but I found it rather
cool to pull-up TV schedules from the Internet to determine programming for
the ATI-TV.
BOTTOM LINE. ATI has announced
a PCI version of the ATI-TV, the ATI-TV Wonder; but, it's not yet available. You
may able to get the ATI-TV for a very good price when that happens. The
less than $100.00 street price, excellent software, and a 5-year warranty
make this board an excellent choice.
Larry
Specifications.
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