ATi TV Wonder USB 2.0

The TV WONDER USB 2.0 - Close-up Powered by the ATI Theater 200

The TV Wonder USB 2.0 is housed in a gray box about the size of a human hand.  As you can see, a variety of connections are supplied.  The Antenna In f-connector is located on one side while the USB and Power connectors are located on the opposite side.  Finally, an S-Video composite connecor as well as audio and video in connectors are supplied.  This allows an external source such as a camcorder or DVD player to be fed through this device and watched on the PC. Incidentally, the bundle provided we looked at here is not a retail package and was rather simplistic with a power adapter and installation CD.

The TV Wonder USB 2.0 is powered by ATI's Theater 200 chip.  This is the same chip found on a majority of the All-In-Wonder solutions from ATI.  This chip is very advanced and handles quite a bit of the product over all feature set responsibilities, from video and stereo audio processing to signal replication.  This chip is tried and true and ATI engineers have been able to get the most out of it through years of enhancements and improvements. 

Also included in the Theater 200 chip is a 2D 3-line comb filter to get the best results in color separation and speed.  For signal replication, the Theater 200 uses dual 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADC's) as compared to competing products that only use dual 9-bit ADC's.  What that means to the end user is a more crisp, clear picture with minimal host CPU utilization.  Overall, this device is not entirely different from an All-In-Wonder card, apart from the fact that it is an external device using a high-speed USB 2.0 interface.