Bad video capturing (ATI All-In-Wonder 128)

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Product:	ATI All-In-Wonder 128
Date:	10/10/01 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: DVD very good, TV tuner very good

Disadvantages: bad capturing

The card was easy to install and set up and the software easy to use, but somewhat cumbersome. I have my personal doubts as to the quality of either the software or the hardware in this combination.

My reservations about the card are due to the fact that YES I wanted hardware playback of DVD`s and YES I wanted a TV Tuner and YES I wanted video capturing facilities. However, the TV Tuner I would rate O.K., that DVD quality is excellent, the video capturing is awful! Countless times have I tried to capture home video movies to edit them using a video editor, only to find some problem with the capture later on in the editing process. Either the picture quality would suffer, the sound quality would suffer or the video capture file would end up in a format that could not be read by the video editor. I found this extremely frustating.

There are later updates to the software on ATI`s web site. I tried the new software out, but found other problems with it, and gave up on it.

The driver that came on the CD seemed to have problems as well. It would lock up the system completely when trying to render certain graphics. I installed a later driver from ATI website and found that the driver was leaving trails behind it when I moved the mouse around the screen. I finally put yet another driver in and so far it`s O.K.

This card is good, but only if you plan on not using it for any serious video capturing.

Summary: