MMC Testing Notes and Remote Wonder Plus
While the vast majority of testing was done under MCE, and for good reason as we'll explain in coming pages, we did give the latest MMC a whirl.ATI MMC 9.13, the all-in-one in-house software bundle given away free by ATI with each All-In-Wonder, was tested on the AIW Radeon X1900 only. MMC exists to let you get the most from your All-In-Wonder without having to buy any extra software. It lets you tune television, FM radio, pause, record and timeshift TV, manage recordings from TV and FM radio, and also offers up a full-screen '10 foot' GUI for using the AIW on TVs.
Digital TV tuning
MMC found much the same channel list as MCE 2005 did. However it loved to crash during the channel preview, or get the preview entirely wrong.MMC 9.13 also has slow channel switching times at times, with the pregnant pause annoying for those used to instant switching on their regular TVs, or even other standalone PVR systems like Sky+.
Radio tuning
FM tuning was fine, although MMC took a liking to adding the same channel multiple times when locking on to strong signals next to each other in the spectrum. See? It should perhaps make an intelligent guess as to which channels are unique. Annoyingly, FM tuning on the AIW Radeon X1900 also suffered from popping and clicking artifacts, making it unlistenable. That happened on all channels, regardless of manual fine tuning.Tuning digital radio was sans artifacting, though.
Remote Wonder Plus
ATI debuted the Remote Wonder Plus with their TV Wonder Elite, and it was bundled with an AIW Radeon for the first time when ATI released the AIW Radeon X1800 XL. The company gave the Remote Wonder II a shot with All-In-Wonder with the X800 variants, and while it was better than the fairly horrible original Remote Wonder, we found it far from perfect.
The Plus is better than them both. Very thin, it's easier to grip than the fatter RW and RW2, and it's around two inches shorter than the 2. The Plus still makes ergonomic mistakes, in this reviewer's opinion, despite the improvements. Channel number buttons sit at the very bottom, and when there's plenty of channels on offer I tend to use memorised channel number assigments to flick between them. That means shuffling the remote to get a thumb to the number buttons, especially after having held it nearer the top to use the directional button.
And while using that button is much better on the Plus, compared to the over-sensitive equivalent on the 2, it's still far from being an accurate thing to use. While there's a distinct lack of pointing to be done in MCE 2005, EAZYLOOK or other 10ft UIs, it's still something that could be improved.
It's the best Remote Wonder to date, though, with the USB radio receiver accepting the Plus's commands over a commendably large distance (tested at over 20ft, through walls). The software is X10 compatible and the remote works great on its own without an All-In-Wonder, for controlling MCE 2005 with other tuners.
