Rating: 
Summary: Very Satisfied
Review: I bought this card because I wanted to watch and record TV shows on my computer, and because I wanted better graphics than my GeForce 2 MX 32MB could offer. I agonized over whether or not to purchase it because of the noticable number of reviews, on this site and others, that basically say, "This card doesn't work!" I finally decided to take the plunge and give ATI a shot.I couldn't be happier with my purchase. The price was great; the features list is beyond incredible; installation was as easy as the manual made it sound; and it all worked on the first try. (I have a solid, but not spectacular, system running WinXP Home Edition, FYI.) I'm afraid I'm going to have to buy another one for my wife's PC. All in all, an incredible deal for a solid product.
Rating:
Summary: Very Satisfied
Review: I bought this card because I wanted to watch and record TV shows on my computer, and because I wanted better graphics than my GeForce 2 MX 32MB could offer. I agonized over whether or not to purchase it because of the noticable number of reviews, on this site and others, that basically say, "This card doesn't work!" I finally decided to take the plunge and give ATI a shot. I couldn't be happier with my purchase. The price was great; the features list is beyond incredible; installation was as easy as the manual made it sound; and it all worked on the first try. (I have a solid, but not spectacular, system running WinXP Home Edition, FYI.) I'm afraid I'm going to have to buy another one for my wife's PC. All in all, an incredible deal for a solid product.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Get So Excited...
Review: I bought this card for a few reasons, the two primarily were for the TV tuner and the specs on the display adapter. I figured a combo card would save time, money and room. The hardware on the card is great, the software and drivers are buggy. Took me two days to get a near perfect installation. Let me just make a very long story short. I tested with the following OS: win98SE, winXP and win2k. My System meets all required hardware to support this card (Memory, HD DMA support). Win98SE works good after new driver installation from ATI website. The main reason i use 98SE is for PC gaming, if you play Unreal Tournament DO NOT GET THIS CARD (win2k and win98SE, nothing works to get UT working), UT is basically all i play so i have not tested with other games. WinXP was a good install, however i got numerous error messages during install. After a reboot things seem to be working ok. Win2k was a better install, again i needed new drivers from ATI website and needed new component upgrades (DirectX, VIA chipset, winMedia CODECS). Using sonic foundry Vegas Video on win2k does not function and halts the system. Unreal Tournament does not work under win2k and this card. The card has some good features. The TV tuner captures mpeg1 and mpeg2 video, allowing you to record TV shows. This part of the software works good (after VIA chipset driver upgrade). ATI has a scheduling software so you can schedule recording times which works well. TV on demand also works well, nice feature, I haven't used it that much. The Gemstar TV listings software as a pain and i still don't have it working. Over all, this card will take you some time and research to install properly. After all is complete there is no guarantee that other applications and games will function along with it. Before making a decision go to google.com and do a search for other reviews of this card.
Rating: 
Summary: This card is terrible
Review: I bought this card for a new custom built system and problems from the start. This card caused my computer to crash so often that I had to save games every 5 minutes to make any progress. I wrote an email to ATI and received an automated reply advising me to update the driver. After downloading 5 files and spending over an hour with DSL I updated the drivers. Still the system crashed all the time. Finally the card totally failed with a boot to black screen and I sent it back to ATI for repairs. I purchased a PNY Geoforce Ti 420 to keep my computer going and suddenly NO CRASHING, NONE! It was so wonderful. I dug up the games that were too frustrating because of the crashes and they were perfect. ATI sent the card back and said that they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Well I can't find anything right with it.
Rating:
Summary: Great Card
Review: I bought this card on a whim as one of my Goldbox offers, but I am happy that I did. The graphics are great, the remote is very cool, and the included software is great, but one note if you are using win 98 first edition...you have to install a patch in order to utilize the cable tv input feature. This drove me nuts because this information was hard to come by. I found the patch on a remote area of the ATI Technologies website...just do a search on it and you can find it. Also, if you plan on recording live tv make sure you have a pretty fast computer, otherwise what you record will be choppy. Other than that I would recommend this card to anyone looking for a good video card with better than average features.
Rating:
Summary: Great Card
Review: I bought this card on a whim as one of my Goldbox offers, but I am happy that I did. The graphics are great, the remote is very cool, and the included software is great, but one note if you are using win 98 first edition...you have to install a patch in order to utilize the cable tv input feature. This drove me nuts because this information was hard to come by. I found the patch on a remote area of the ATI Technologies website...just do a search on it and you can find it. Also, if you plan on recording live tv make sure you have a pretty fast computer, otherwise what you record will be choppy. Other than that I would recommend this card to anyone looking for a good video card with better than average features.
Rating: 
Summary: There are better options
Review: I bought this card to start creating SVCD's (Super Video Discs - basically CD's you can play in your DVD Player) of my favorite show. I didn't have any problems getting this card to work right out of the box, but when I started watching/recording - I found a lot of strange static on the channel I wanted to record. After replacing all the cables I was sure it must be the card... as the same cable, plugged into an actuall television had none of this static. I managed to return the card for a new one, but had the same problem with the second card. I later purchased a Leadtek Winfast 2000xp tuner card - and it has great sound and picture - but lacks the software features of the ATI. So, for anyone interested in recording and making SVCDs or VCDs of their shows, I offer the following comparison and pro/con list. Picture quality and sound: The Leadtek was far better, showing a crisp picture, and with none of the sound problems of the ATI. Software: ATI is the clear winner here. Leadtek has no built in channel guide (although you can use titantv.com - but it is much more time consuming than using ATI's built it guide). The ATI software allows you to create much better recording schedules, and you can modify most details of the recording. The ATI software created great SVCD compatible MPEG2s (on the non-static channels), but with that static, they were useless. Leadtek allows you to modify the recording options (like bitrate, etc) in their software - but you can only select the resolution from a drop down list (and the SVCD compativle 480x480 is not there) and making any custom settings seems to throws the audio/video out of sync by several seconds. One thing to note, however, is that this card comes with an older version of the software. If you want the new stuff, you'll have to pay $ to get it from the ATI online store. Pros:
-Great software -I'm sure some people will have better luck with the whole static issue Cons:
-Just OK graphics chip
-Have to pay for software update
-Less than perfect tuner card End result: I started using the freeware Virtualdub to record from the leadtek card, and then convert this to compliant MPEGs. This works, but it is incredible time consuming compared to the extremely simple ATI setup. I wish anyone who buys this card more luck than I had!
Rating:
Summary: There are better options
Review: I bought this card to start creating SVCD's (Super Video Discs - basically CD's you can play in your DVD Player) of my favorite show. I didn't have any problems getting this card to work right out of the box, but when I started watching/recording - I found a lot of strange static on the channel I wanted to record. After replacing all the cables I was sure it must be the card... as the same cable, plugged into an actuall television had none of this static. I managed to return the card for a new one, but had the same problem with the second card. I later purchased a Leadtek Winfast 2000xp tuner card - and it has great sound and picture - but lacks the software features of the ATI. So, for anyone interested in recording and making SVCDs or VCDs of their shows, I offer the following comparison and pro/con list. Picture quality and sound: The Leadtek was far better, showing a crisp picture, and with none of the sound problems of the ATI. Software: ATI is the clear winner here. Leadtek has no built in channel guide (although you can use titantv.com - but it is much more time consuming than using ATI's built it guide). The ATI software allows you to create much better recording schedules, and you can modify most details of the recording. The ATI software created great SVCD compatible MPEG2s (on the non-static channels), but with that static, they were useless. Leadtek allows you to modify the recording options (like bitrate, etc) in their software - but you can only select the resolution from a drop down list (and the SVCD compativle 480x480 is not there) and making any custom settings seems to throws the audio/video out of sync by several seconds. One thing to note, however, is that this card comes with an older version of the software. If you want the new stuff, you'll have to pay $ to get it from the ATI online store. Pros:
-Great software -I'm sure some people will have better luck with the whole static issue Cons:
-Just OK graphics chip
-Have to pay for software update
-Less than perfect tuner card End result: I started using the freeware Virtualdub to record from the leadtek card, and then convert this to compliant MPEGs. This works, but it is incredible time consuming compared to the extremely simple ATI setup. I wish anyone who buys this card more luck than I had!
Rating:
Summary: A must for the college dorm
Review: I got this card because the AIW 8500 won the tv capture round-up at AnandTech.com, and since the major difference is just in memory and GPU power, I opted for this card and save $100. I'm hoping to upgrade to the AIW 9700 if it comes out, but let me explain why I think this card is a must for the college dorm room. Setup was quick (they have a very comprehensive manual). As for drivers, I always suggest going to the manufacturers site and getting the latest drivers. First of all, two really cool features about TV watching are 1.) You can make the TV your wallpaper background. Completely unobtrusive, and you can simply minimize your windows if you wanna watch it. 2.) I'm using Windows XP and there is a transparency option. It's pretty neat since you can watch TV and surf the web without the TV window hogging any space. The transparency works very well, in my opinion, and everything is pretty clear.
Talk about space saving. TV viewing is very fast. Quick surfers will find that channels change almost instantaneously (which is great for someone like me who likes to surf fast). TV Capture is incredible. It gives you a whole slew of encoding options (both resolution and format), but probably the best is MPEG2, which encodes at 8 MB/s. If it's DivX you want, capture it with Virtual Dub (although, I've been getting a 2% frame drop rate, so it's probably best to grab it in mpeg2 first, then convert to DivX). Compared to a lot of what I've used before, for the price I'm paying, I am quite amazed. The TV-Replay feature is neat, though I'm still figuring it out. I got it to pause in the middle of Simpsons, and continue about 1/2 hour later. I enjoy the GemStar+ feature, because with a mouse and keyboard, I can surf through channels even faster. As for the Display quality. I hooked it up to my Apex 24" TV through S-Video, kicked in my favorite DVD and it's near perfect. Watching TV through my computer was the same as watching through TV. Dual monitoring with a TV can get kind of weird ( prefer having two monitors), but it works fine nonetheless.
And gaming? Well from the benchmarks I've seen it's just about a 10% behind the GeForce4 MX440. Not bad for being such a feature rich card.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent graphics, not soo good compatability and service
Review: I got this card mainly for its s-video and rca cable capability to use with my digital camcorder in order to broadcast video on the internet. It also was quite the upgrade from my 8mb card that came with my computer. The install was a breeze to do on my own though this is a rather large card so you may need to use your top AGP slot in order to house it properly. Once installed my computer immediately recognized it. My troubles began with an apparant compatability issue with ATI products and non Intel processors. My screen size is either about 1/2 inch too large for my monitor or 1/2 inch too small and makes my desktop look like its in letterbox format. No matter how much adjusting I did with ATI's screen adjustment feature could I ever get the screen size right. I tried looking for a patch on ATI's website for non Intel processors. No dice there. So I live with a screen size issue. Next is many webcam programs (not webcam32, ATI works great with it, once you get the patch) are compatable with ATI, including Netmeeting and ISPQ. Thank goodness I use Teveo and Webcam32 to broadcast video or I'd be in a world of trouble. The cables included with this card are nice and long in order to plug my webcam into. And I LOVE the difference between 64MB graphics and 8mb graphics! I'm pretty easy to please regarding this though since I am not a hardcore gamer, DIablo II and Alice look great on it though. I also dont use the DVD player plug in capability or the TV in features so I cannot review those.
I've probably got more card than I need, but I love what I have, except the compatability issues. Oh, and dont even dream of getting ATI to email you back.... I've fallen into their customer service black hole more than once.
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