ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner: AMD and Dell Bring CableCARD to PCs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 3, 2007 11:37 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Experience: Vista Media Center
There are a few parts to the experience of Dell's OCUR enabled system. First and foremost is the Vista Media Center experience which we've never talked about in great detail. With Vista, Microsoft did away with having a separate Media Center Edition of the OS and simply rolled its functionality into two versions of Vista: Home Premium and Ultimate. Armed with either version of the OS, you get the familiar green icon that will launch a 10-ft UI designed to be used with a remote control.
Vista's media center UI is a much more polished and updated version of the MCE we remember from Windows XP; the old UI just looks dated now. Vista once again cemented Microsoft's lead in the DVR UI market, it's just so slick:
The Program Guide
If you bring up the guide in front of video you get a nice overlay effect:
There are still parts of the media center UI that will minimize the playing video into an unreasonably small PiP square in the lower left corner of the screen:
The little square in the lower left corner: useful or not?
Functionality hasn't necessarily increased, although like many of the changes in Vista's UI it's not hard to feel that the UI is a bit more cluttered.
Systems are far faster today than when Media Center Edition first made its debut, and thankfully the performance requirements of the UI haven't gone up too much. With Vista, the media center UI is nice and snappy with one exception: navigating the main menus appears choppy if you try to scroll horizontally too quickly. We're not exactly sure why, even on a custom built system we run into the same sluggish scrolling through the horizontal menus.
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DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Uh.. I don't think you understand how these things work. The only inputs on the 650 & AIW are composite and S-video. Neither is going to allow you to record anything in HD from your cable box. The HD support on the 650 is only for OTA.BPB - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
You know, until now I thought the AIW X1900 had YPrPb input. Man, I need to wake up!TheTerl - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
I was amused by the choice in movies. After all, who wouldn't want to check out "Boinking in the Dorm Room" at work? With a title like that, I'm sure it's a cinematic masterpiece.Aside from that, very interesting article.
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Thing is, it may show up in the guide, but you can't actually order it... :0)WileCoyote - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Only Anand can turn an article I would normally ingore into a fun and interesting read. Good stuff!MercenaryForHire - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Agreed. While I have nothing but distaste for this hardware, its related metric assload of DRM tie-ins, and lack of DIY support, I enjoyed reading the review of it immensely.pjladyfox - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
"why on earth would you go through this when you can just rent an HD-DVR from us for $9 a month?"I think this pretty much sums up the entire system to begin with. It really does make me wonder if the unholy alliance (read: MPAA/RIAA/Cable/Telco) is making the use of CableCard-based devices more difficult than it needs to be. The number of people that were called on-site just to resolve the multiple issues is a rather telling statement that while the tech may be great it is being set up to fail in the marketplace.
And why was there no provision for HDMI input? I mean, it was designed with HDCP encryption in mind so I would have thought this would have been a no-brainer but if I had to guess I would say the unholy alliance shot that idea down real quick. -_-
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
Cable companies are required by the FCC to provide cable cards upon request. However, it's pretty obvious they make it as difficult as possible to get them up and running ($42.95 install fee?).tuteja1986 - Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - link
I hope the person incharge of this project reads this because he needs to get up his lazy ass and start sloving these issue by getting the right dude to slove this problems. Then ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner + VISTA MCE will succeed or Hollywood could just kill DRM which would make life easier on their loyal customer.