The DTV/TV players

The DTV player is used to watch digital television stations. The digital TV tuner can support up to 70 channels, and as we mentioned before can be used to automatically scan for all major and minor channels in your area. The DTV player functions just like a normal TV player, with channel up and down buttons, and even provide parental control functionality for locking out stations from the kids.

Traditional analog signal recorded with HDTV WONDER

And now the digital signal from the same scene

Leno in analog

Leno in digital

Like other ATI multimedia products the DTV player allows you to capture still images and supports timeshifting, ATI refers to this feature as TV-ON-DEMAND. This allows you to pause live TV, get up and answer the phone, and return later to pick up right where you left off. You can even fast-forward to skip to another section of the programming, or if you wish, you can jump straight back to the live broadcast. HDTV WONDER is the first non-ALL-IN-WONDER product to provide this feature, and the first HDTV tuner card we’re aware of with timeshifting capabilities.

When paired with another tuner card, the HDTV WONDER can provide picture-in-picture support (mulTView), while an ATI card is required for THRUVIEW (which provides a translucent mode that can be used to set the TV as a transparent image behind your work), EAZYLOOK, and the channel surf feature, which is useful for browsing dozens of stations simultaneously.

Who would have known his career with the Lakers was on the line that night

Another shot from the Lakers/Pistons game

One new feature ATI has added to the DTV player is “What’s On Now!”. By clicking this button, you can see the program that is currently on as well as a brief description, it will also tell you what’s coming on next. Keep in mind that the availability of this feature will not only vary depending on the channel, but even the content that’s currently on. In other words, your local ABC station may provide this information one hour, and then the next it’s unavailable.

ATI has made one change with recorded DTV content. Since DTV recordings are so large (19.2Mb/sec or about 5GB per hour), DTV recordings are only accessible from within the media library. You can’t access them from anywhere else until they’re exported from within the media library. Once there you can export them into a smaller file (say for instance, for fitting on a DVD or CD) to conserve space, or you can maintain the original DTV quality of your recording.

TV Player

The HDTV WONDER’s TV player is unchanged from previous ALL-IN-WONDER and TV WONDER products. It’s a stereo TV tuner capable of supporting up to 125 channels and provides TV-ON-DEMAND, VIDEOSOAP (for cleaning up video captures) and Gemstar GUIDE Plus+ in addition to the features we’ve already mentioned for the DTV player. By combining the digital functionality of an HDTV tuner card with the features found in ATI’s analog TV WONDER/ALL-IN-WONDER, ATI’s got all their bases covered. You can watch over-the-air DTV content in standard definition and high definition quality while premium cable channels such as HBO, ESPN, and Cinemax can be watched, scheduled, or recorded with everything you’d expect in an ALL-IN-WONDER card.