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Tuning
The TV Functions:::...
With
the software installed and running properly you can
now click the "Setup" icon and get some
fine-tuning done.
The
"Display" panel lets you set the default
screen size when not set to full screen, though like
me you'll almost certainly end up dragging it to a
an entirely different size anyway. You can also define
the "Aspect Ratio" with options for 4:3,
Letterbox 16:9, Letterbox 1.85:1, Letterbox 2.35:1,
Widescreen 16:9, Widescreen 1.85:1 and Widescreen
2.35:1.
From
here you can also decide what happens to the display
when you minimise it with the options to have it switch
to a "Video Desktop", ThruView Desktop"
or "ThruView Window". Well look at what
these mean further down the page.
Of
course any TV worth its salt lets you adjust colour,
brightness and contrast and the All-In-Wonder 9800
Pro is no different other than it adds a monitor "Gamma"
option to the fray.
The
"Tint" option only functions for NTSC broadcasts
and is greyed out when using PAL.
Next
is the "TV Tuner" panel which gives access
to naming your channels and deciding which need to
be assigned a password and locked out of general viewing.
Clicking
the "Details" button opens a sub-panel where
individual channel-specific parameters like whether
or not it appears in the channel list are set.
And
next if you're in North America you can configure
your Closed Caption settings from this panel.
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TV
Setup - Closed Caption Panel
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The
"Personal Video Recorder", or PVR to use
its more common acronym, comes with a variety of quality
settings that can be tweaked. Each of the four presets
can be further tweaked by using the "Map Preset"
button.........
........which
opens a sub-panel where different levels of filtering
"VIDEOSOAP" can be applied along with other
size and quality related settings. We'll look at the
PVR and VIDEOSOAP in more detail a little later.
The
ATi VCR option is a proprietary format used by ATi
which is supposedly more efficient than MPEG-2 recording.
Don't worry though if you change your mind, the *.vcr
file you've created can be converted back to either
MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 using the integral MMC "Library"
function which we'll take a look at in a second.
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TV
Setup - Recording Presets
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If
you've seen the quality of a captured TV image you'll
know it's not something you'll be doing very often
unless you have very specific needs to. This panel
however lets you set the image destination, naming
convention and so on.
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TV
Setup - Stills Gallery
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And
finally, there's not much point having a personal
video recorder if you've got to be in the house to
start it, so there's the "Schedule" panel.
Setting
up a new schedules even is again handles by a user
friendly Wizard which takes you through the whole
procedure step by step.
But
it's not only TV recording you can schedule. You can
also set a reminder to watch a TV program or have
a CD play for example. The CD idea seems a bit crazy
but this is a great security feature, or you could
even use it as an alarm clock function to get you
up in a morning.
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TV
Setup - Schedules Wizard
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Next
name the event and specify its frequency.....
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TV
Setup - Schedules Wizard
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If
it's something you want to schedule for every day
then just set a time.....
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TV
Setup - Schedules Wizard
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Likewise
if it's something you want to schedule for every weekday
you just set a time.....
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TV
Setup - Schedules Wizard
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If
it's something you want to schedule for once per week
then you need to specify a day and a time.....
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TV
Setup - Schedules Wizard
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While
a one-off event needs a date and a time.
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TV
Setup - Schedules Wizard
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And
the results of your labours, the ATi TB player in
all its glory!
Quick adjustments can
be made by right clicking the screen and bringing
up the settings menu which also serves as a reminder
for the hotkey functions.
So
what exactly is ThruView and Video Desktop and the
other things we mentioned further up the page?
Well,
ThruView is a nifty little feature whereby
the TV image displays on your desktop but becomes
partially transparent. Although the image remains
on top of what ever it is you're doing at all times,
the really great thing is that you can click through
it so it never hinders your work, other than being
a touch distracting of course. It's kind of like a
ghost image that constantly floats just above your
working area.
Video
Desktop is another nice idea though it's one that's
been with the All-In-Wonder for some time now. This
basically replaces your existing wallpaper with the
TV broadcast so you can watch TV full screen but still
have access to all your icons and open and close programs
as you would normally.
ThruView
Desktop simply combines the two and gives full
screen and semitransparent TV that's always visible.
The main difference is that when all your programs
are closed you can still see your wallpaper through
the full screen TV image.
If
I could add one thing to ThruView it would be the
ability to specify how much transparency is applied.
On complex backgrounds a little less transparency
is often needed while simple backgrounds are usually
fine. ++SEE
BOTTOM OF PAGE++
TV
In Your Browser is yet another innovation that I hadn't
come across before. MMC creates an "ATi TV"
button in your browser, well, in IE6.0 it does, and
clicking this opens up a tiny TV app that runs in
your left hand side menu. My only complaint here is
that it only appears in the browser window from which
it was invoked, and each one you open thereafter,
but if you have several browser windows open at once
and then you invoke the TV you have to do it for each
one individually.
And
last but not least is the "Stills Gallery".
From here you can save, delete, view and print your
images in addition to saving them as a wallpaper.
Teletext:::...
UK
users may not have Closed Caption, but we do have
Teletext, and the good news is that unlike some earlier
implementations it works. In fact not only does it
work, it's actually extremely good.
I
don't know what kind of page caching is going on behind
the scenes but pages load incredibly quickly. We're
missing a "Home" or "Index" button
from the virtual remote but otherwise I was pretty
blown away. Nice job!
Channel
Surf:::...
The
channel surf option also worked as advertised. A still
shot of each channel's broadcast is displayed on the
screen and the software cycles through them updating
each in turn. If you click one on any of the thumbs
then it shows a few seconds of the live broadcast
with audio in the small window to help you decide
if you want to watch or not, before continuing to
cycle through again. Double click the channel you
want and it opens in the TV window as normal. Not
an essential feature with the UK's lack of terrestrial
channels but worth having anyway.
General
Impressions - TV
The
TV aspect of the All-In-Wonder as you might expect
accounts for the vast majority of its functionality,
and for the most part it's genuinely impressive. Colours
were vibrant and had surpassingly good contrast, while
noise and compression artifacts were as good or better
than some of the more expensive stand-alone TV cards
I've used.
It's
not the sharpest TV picture I've ever seen, though
it's not far away, but the general quality is good
enough for this to not matter as much as you might
think it would. With a maximum analogue resolution
of 1024x768 it competes and surpasses the current
crop of "high definition" TV cards around.
MMC
8.9 seems to have sharpened the TV picture compared
to MMC8.5 but without being able to see them running
side-by-side it's hard to know if this is really the
case or if it's down to slightly different brightness
or contrast settings.
Flickering,
or should I say jitter, was a minor problem on some
occasions but it was very slight and not particularly
distracting. A fortunate thing really as there's no
way to correct it that I could find.
Another
slightly annoying problem is that the output volume
seems unusually low. DVDs get away with the same problem
by claiming it allows for the full dynamic range of
volume levels, I don't think most TV broadcasts would
get away with using the same excuse. I can't comment
on whether this is a problem with all broadcast standards
but using PAL it could certainly do with a bit of
a volume boost. I also had a problem where the sound
would distort periodically during live TV broadcasts
for no good reason. It seems to happen every 15-30
minutes or so and stays distorted for around 30 seconds
to a minute. I'm still trying to find the source of
this problem, but it happened using both the internal
and the external audio connector.
On
balance though the TV features are hard to grumble
about. Well restrained contrast and dynamic range
and vibrant colours make the TV a pleasure to watch.
UPDATE,
Thanks to Iron Tiger who pointed out that ThruView
does indeed feature a transparency slider. When the
TV is running in ThruView mode, an icon appears in
your system tray (which I had missed completely) that
when clicked opens the following:
The
top slider controls the transparency level, the lower
one is the volume, to the left is the channel change
function while to the right is the mute button.
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