Rating: 
Summary: ATI hasn't lost it's reputation for buggy software, I see.
Review: I've found that people either love or hate ATI products. Everything revolves around one issue: Will it run on your computer or not? The reason behind this is their long history of inadequate software and driver testing. In my case I've owned a TV Wonder, an All-In-Wonder Rage 128 PCI and my latest, the All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro. So far, not ONE has worked on any of my computers without constant freezeups and crashes, often accompanied by a screen covered with gibberish. A case for Technical Support, you say? ATI's technical support, "Customer Care" (Message: We Care, no doubt) makes me feel like the only thing they care about is getting the sale. What you really experience is an auto-reply which covers advice on several hundred known problems on EVERY card ATI "supports", and a link to their online FAQ for more. Another option is to call them long-distance in Canada and stay on hold for 30 minutes and up. If you have owned your card for more than thirty days, you can pay them a premium for calling as well. I found it interesting that on the largest review site on the web, even all of the reviewers who LIKED the card experienced major bugs. Still, 61% of those who owned the card gave it a thumbs down! Think about that before you take a (61%) chance of wishing you'd never heard of ATI or their lousy drivers and software. Out of the dozens of computers I've built, the only video card I've had consistent problems with have been ATI's. If Nvidia made a card that achieved what ATI promises with their All-In-Wonder line, I would be happy to throw my ATI Wonder in the trash and be done with it for good. So, do you think you're lucky?
Rating:
Summary: ATI hasn't lost it's reputation for buggy software, I see.
Review: I've found that people either love or hate ATI products. Everything revolves around one issue: Will it run on your computer or not? The reason behind this is their long history of inadequate software and driver testing. In my case I've owned a TV Wonder, an All-In-Wonder Rage 128 PCI and my latest, the All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro. So far, not ONE has worked on any of my computers without constant freezeups and crashes, often accompanied by a screen covered with gibberish. A case for Technical Support, you say? ATI's technical support, "Customer Care" (Message: We Care, no doubt) makes me feel like the only thing they care about is getting the sale. What you really experience is an auto-reply which covers advice on several hundred known problems on EVERY card ATI "supports", and a link to their online FAQ for more. Another option is to call them long-distance in Canada and stay on hold for 30 minutes and up. If you have owned your card for more than thirty days, you can pay them a premium for calling as well. I found it interesting that on the largest review site on the web, even all of the reviewers who LIKED the card experienced major bugs. Still, 61% of those who owned the card gave it a thumbs down! Think about that before you take a (61%) chance of wishing you'd never heard of ATI or their lousy drivers and software. Out of the dozens of computers I've built, the only video card I've had consistent problems with have been ATI's. If Nvidia made a card that achieved what ATI promises with their All-In-Wonder line, I would be happy to throw my ATI Wonder in the trash and be done with it for good. So, do you think you're lucky?
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best option
Review: If you want a real PVR option, don't buy this card. Buy the video card and TV card separately. I've had an AIW card for a year and wish I had spent a few extra bucks 11 months ago.
The idea behind a video capture card is that you can pause, rewind and record live TV. By far the best way to do this is to buy a separate video capture card with hardware encoding. This way, the card converts the video signal into a format that can be saved on your hard drive (mpeg2).
Otherwise, your CPU must do the work. That's what ATI All-in-Wonder cards do. While ATI makes great video cards, integrated cards like the AIW cards rely on the CPU to do all the dirty work.
Video is somewhat jerky when you have TIVO capabilities enabled (pause/rewind live TV). You'll notice it especially when watching sports -- because the card drops frames due to the heavy CPU load.
Their TV software is pretty decent -- and actually has some pretty great features.
But their guide software (Guide Plus+) leaves much to be desired. You have to manually iniate guide updates and it only downloads the guide a week at a time -- so you have to remember to update the guide. Other available packages download the guide automatically, daily, and two weeks at a time.
I have an AMD Athlon 2600 CPU with 512 MB of RAM and two 80GB hard drives and I still encountered all these problems. I spent a year trying to get better performance and finally broke down and bought a card with hardware encoding (the Avermedia UltraTV 1500 MCE).
The picture is better, the sound is better, TIVO capabilities work without compromising system performance or dropping frames. I started using Snapstream BeyondTV software to view and record shows and I couldn't be happier.
In short, spend an extra $20 and skip the video/TV tuner combo cards and you'll be much happier in the long run.
Rating: 
Summary: Great card for the money at $200
Review: Paying more than $200 is ridiculous of course. I'm not sure why they don't get their video card prices more inline with what's available elsewhere online (at NewEgg for instance). If you're going to fork over $364 than get ATI's newest card the Radeon X800 for $445. Actually Amazon's price is better at $429 currently.
Rating:
Summary: Forget TiVo, forget add-on PVRs. Get this.
Review: The funny thing about today's trend of recording to hard drives is that it had been realized by ATI quite some time ago. The All-In-Wonder series of video cards from ATI are expensive items, but in the rare category of "Worth Every Nickel". I've owned nVidia cards, Creative cards, Hercules, Diamond, just about everything *but* an ATI card. They're expensive, and I never had the scratch until I got older. Boy, had I know what this baby could do, I'd have saved a little more The AIW Radeon Series extends a successful formula: display television signals on a PC, and display PC video on a television. If this seems logical, consider that ATI (along with Hauppauge) has been in this space for years now. The worst-kept secret is finally out. The Radeon series is an extremely fast, capable display card with abilities far in excess of game-only display cards from nVidia or Creative. The AIW Radeon 9800 ships with a remote control, an IR receiver, a variety of adapters for video input/output, software galore, and real instruction manuals. The software bundle puts tuning capability (not digital/ satellite though, as they have card access devices that cannot be tuned outside of the receiver), recording capability, and DVD playback right out of the box. Drivers come on a single CD, but after you perform an initial install on a Win2k or WinXP box, just download the latest drivers from ATI's website and go from there. Installation is easy. Driver installation is easy. Once this is up, you'll need to spend some time learning what it can do, but in ten minutes you can be displaying Unreal on your plasma television for everyone to watch (you'd better be good or your deaths will be good grist for the humor mill). You can rely on good documentation to help you figure out more-complex routing, and recording isn't really a ten-minute task, but here's the real scoop on this card: you can use your existing PC to record television, just like an add-on TiVo or PVR unit, just by owning this card. Convergence is already here, and my pick is ATI's AIW Radeon 9800.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of time and money
Review: This card is junk. I made the mistake of buying it instead of buying a regular video card and a tv capture card. The reason this card is junk is because it only supports software encoding when capturing media (television programs) and software decoding when playing that media back.
My recommendation is to avoid ATI altogether. I say that for a few reasons. First the card arrived with a DVI to VGA adapter. The screws on the adapter don't reach the card, so I just have it kind of pushed on unsecure. I wrote ATI about it and they just sent out a generic message regarding software drivers! Next I got a cryptic error all of the sudden.
(...)
I have done the research and wasted the time, so I wanted to share my experience and make sure ATI doesn't screw over another consumer.
Rating:
Summary: lets list the flaws too
Review: this product does what the others report but... I've only had it 2 weeks and found out that it will REFUSE to record some shows because the software has some way of knowing that the transmitter wants copyright protection. (this was sports of free tv) So consider paying $400 to make a pc into a vcr that refuses to record some shows. 2nd the drivers & software arent being kept up to date. 3rd there are problems with agp drivers on many motherboards. 4th Allot of what you would think that the software would do it does not. for instance i have been unable to tell it to record the same show in the same time slot every week or day like you can a $50 vcr. so it feels like 1st generation hardware & software to me. also if you have a taste for normal tv resolution on replay better add a 100 gig drive to your expected costs.
Rating:
Summary: downright disfunctional
Review: this thing has more bugs than functions. i got a great deal on it, but after two weeks' worth of downloading new drivers, troubleshooting, searching for answers, and a whole lot of cursing, i returned it for a radeon 9800 pro 256mb. i'm fine without the TV functions, but i need a card that won't crash five minutes into anything. on a side note, the card runs extra hot, and modding it won't make it go away. so unless your pc is well ventilated, you just might fry something expensive.
Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Video Card!
Review: Wanna be a gamer? Wanna make home movies? Wanna be a couch potato? Go no further. This card packs everything you need. OK, if you want serious gaming, check out the GeForce cards. But if you want great gaming WITH tv, video, and capture capability, this is your card. The 9000 series cards alone are the best capture enabled cards out there, but this one is updated. Check out ati.com for a full spec list. First of all, it's AGP, which means its fast. It has an onbaord processor, and lots of ram (more ram than half the computers in use today have). It has great and useful inputs and features. from S-Video to DVI output for the most advanced monitors, projectors or TVs. The cards feature full support for extended desktops and dual monitors, a feature that will be useful for any pc user, guaranteed. The capture capabilities are awesome, with DVD qualitity capturing, making your home movies superior. Sure, the GeForce have the upper hand in graphics rendering (because they have fast onboard cpu's), but they don't have those features mentioned above. Gaming is great with this card, you won't miss a frame with this card rendering your graphics. The card is easy to install, and the software is as well. Don't wait, PC Video Editing is really here! (You'll definately be able to compete with your Mac friends!)
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