ATI's TV viewer was both easy to use and informative. All buttons are clearly laid out and the most common functions are located right below the TV window. Since ATI made their own cable decoding chip, they are able to gather some information that the competition cannot. When a channel is changed, a green overlay of information appears on the screen and provides the channel number, call sign if entered , and the rating of the show.
Shows can be filtered according to their rating, allowing shows with certain ratings to be locked and only accessible by entering the correct password. This is a neat feature, although we suspect that many will never use it. Enabling the closed caption feature made the TV software react just as a normal television would react to closed captions: by displaying 2 lines of text in a black box near the bottom of the image.
This can easily be changed, however, allowing the closed caption text to be displayed in a separate window as well. The software also features "TV Magazine" which enables the closed caption information to be logged to a text file for future reference. The live TV image can also be zoomed in on. Zooming in on an area of the display naturally makes the image larger, but it also makes the picture much more grainy. We would not suggest leaving the picture in zoom mode, unless you want eye strain.
The TV image can be sized to a variety of sizes, including full screen and desktop overlay. Aspect ratio on the image may also be changed, allowing the user to set his or her own resolution. Still images can be captured and saved in the "Stills Gallery. The windowed gallery display was nice, as it allowed for us to see what has already been captured. Videos from television may be recorded using a "digital VCR.
Videos are recorded by hitting the camcorder icon on the icon bar. ATI's time shifting technology, which allows the user to watch TV in the past while recording TV in the future, worked flawlessly. This feature comes in extremely useful. Live TV can be paused for a bathroom break, missed lines can be replayed by rewinding your TV, and commercials can be skipped by jumping past them. To test the time shifting software, we set the program to pause for 5 minutes time and then took up TV watching where we left off.
The time status bar at the bottom of the program's display showed how much time we had shifted represented in red as well as what time we were currently watching. We found that skipping commercials and going back to a shot we wanted to see again was no problem. As we warned before, the program did consume quite a bit of system resources, but ran fine on our test setup.
Where ATI's software bundle really won our hearts was when we first ran the included GuidePlus software. The program, which is included in the software package but not available for download or purchase, made our days of channel surfing obsolete.
Much like a digital cable or DSS setup, GuidePlus allows for complete program information to be displayed on your computer. By entering in you ZIP code, the GuidePlus software is able to figure out what channel numbers correspond to what station. When this is determined, GuidePlus connects to it's server and downloads channel information and program listings for the upcoming week. Since the software is running on a PC, navigation and controls were much easier than the television versions of this software.
The colors and software that came with the video is wonderful! Easy to install and I was up and running in no time. With ATI name backing it up all the way. I would recommend this video card. We have dropped our prices on select products even further. View the details on any product with the symbol and click the Lowest Price tag to view our additionally discounted price. Authorized dealers are requested by their suppliers to advertise their products at a minimum selling price. We can often offer a discounted price after displaying the MAP price to the user.
To view our discounted price, simply click the Lowest Price Tag in the product details page or add the item to your shopping cart. Customer Reviews Avg. Customer Rating: 4. Write your own review. Overall 4.
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