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The most interesting of the said applications is the TV Application. This single application holds host to the majority of the more video related features, such as TV-ON-DEMAND and Digital VCR Functions.
Setting up the TV application was a breeze, and immediately after launching the program, the user is presented with an initialization wizard to help along configuration.
TV Channels Initialization Wizard
For users looking to user an RF/Tuner setup, the initialisation wizard initially auto scans all applicable frequencies, dependant on your location and antenna choice. I found the auto scan to be very effective, and it immediately picked up all 5 UK Analogue channels without a hiccup using the exhaustive search, although when using the fast search, it their were issues tuning channel 5 adequately.
The user is then requested to select a parental control password and choose and audio source, the most likely being the line-in on your soundcard.
Capture formats wizard
The next stage relates to the assignment of a default capture format for both TV-ON-DEMAND and Digital VCR, the options being ATI's Digital VCR format, MPEG, AVI or Windows Media Format.
This purely comes down to preference, as advanced options relating to capture format (demonstrated later) are available anyway, so at this stage it's a matter of just choose one. I went with ATI's own format.
TV On Demand wizard
The final stage allows the configuration of the TV-ON-DEMAND functions, giving users options such as disk space allocation, CPU utilisation settings and quality settings (both under advanced settings).
A very useful addition is the "approximate time available" variable, which basically dictates how long you will be able pause a broadcast based on your allowance of hard disk space. The more space you allocate the long you can pause.
Now let's take a look at the functionality of the application itself.
TV application itself
All the popular functions are present, such as the ability to change ratio's, digitally zoom in on a source, the ability to take snapshots and save to disk, subtitles, and settings allow users to change all manner of picture and sound settings.
One of the cool additions is that you can set the TV Application, specifically video window, at a user-defined transparency level. What this means is you can be browsing the internet for instance, and have the TV showing in the background 'beneath' the window, a simple yet useful addition to the application.
The App also integrates into Internet explorer and gives the option of opening a little resizable TV window, much like the media player in Internet Explorer version 6.0 on the left hand side, as an alternative to using the transparency feature.
The Remote Wonder integrates flawlessly with the TV application, and provides complete control over nearly all functions of the application providing users with control external of the desktop.
The application gives users the option of choosing 3 sources of signal input for viewing, RF (Ariel), Composite or S-Video. One point to note initially is that if you are using the Composite or S-Video for input, you will have to change channel externally via your Sky/Cable remote; the Remote Wonder will not provide this function for these connections.
For reference, the image quality of the inputs was flawless, and there was pleasingly minimal amount of noise on the RF based connection, although I feel this is mainly determined by quality of Ariel/Antenna rather than the card itself. I'd hoped to have taken some screenshots of the image quality, but unfortunately my desktop capturing method seemed to leave a black image where you would normally see the display, as you can see with the above image.
Channel surfing with the remote or keyboard does come into play with an RF connection however, and the channels switch swiftly thanks to the high quality TV Tuner.
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