Comparing the ATI TV Wonder Elite & Cable Set Top Box (from: Addicted to Digital Media)
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A few weeks back, I talked about getting an ATI TV Wonder Elite TV Tuner board for my MCE to test out - the first ISF-certified board for PCs. I’ve since been putting it through its paces for the past few weeks on my Deskop MCE upstairs and it has operated flawlessly.
Disclaimer: I’m not a video expert. My impressions are purely subjective and your mileage may vary.
Yesterday, I did an A/B comparision of the ATI board in my MCE on my Samsung HLN-507W HDTV set (MCE connected via DVI) vs. the HDTV cable box (connected via Composite). First thing you can see here is that this wasn’t an unbiased test but for some reason, the new box doesn’t like my DVI+HDCP setup- probably need a different cable. But what I was surprised by was that on analog channels, the ATI TV Tuner’s output looked better to me than the cable box. The image was less jagged and color shimmered less. Have we turned a corner on PC-based TV quality?
I’d really like to see a site like ExtremeTech or reputed testing authority compare the output of these new ISF-certified TV tuners for MCE vs. Cable boxes/DVRs using an industry-recognized qualitative and quantitative methodology. Anyone working on this? Any other thoughts on the ATI TV Wonder Elite?
Done in my own time. Without warranty and confers no rights.