ATi TV Wonder USB 2.0
More Multimedia Center 9 and Image Quality
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The "Media Library" component of the Multimedia Center is a melting pot for various media types. Here movie files, audio files, and TV-ON-DEMAND files can be stored and added to a playlist. The Media Library doesn't just list media files captured through the Multimedia Center, it allows the user to export these files as well. To make these files easier to sort through, there are a few different sorting options which can specify the type of media as well as how recent the media is.
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Also available through the media player is the option to create a playlist which can be burned to CD or DVD. While this feature was not as straight forward as we'd like it to be we did manage to burn the playlist succesfully. Overall we liked the media library but found one quirky behavior with it. When using the TV-ON-DEMAND feature from the TV application, files are automatically cached to the hard drive so the TV can be paused, rewound, and fast-forwarded. These cached files are automatically added to the Media Library, but for some reason cannot be removed from the library unless the file is manually deleted from the hard drive. Other media files can simply be removed from the library without having to physically delete the file from the hard drive. In our eyes, this proved to be a minor distraction from an overall quality application.
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Below are a couple of still images captured while watching live TV. As you can see both images appear to be on the grainy side. Keep in mind this is an analog cable connection that has been split a few times inside the testing area. Each split will cause a loss of signal and some image quality. One thing we noticed was that watching live TV did not appear to be as grainy. Only once the image is captured did we start to notice the differences between live TV and a still picture. We found the TV feature to be more the adequate in terms of picture quality and did not find any problems viewing the programs or reading small text on the screen. The output was about what we expected from an analog signal.
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