Review: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro All-In-Wonder

Software Setup III

Then you are asked to set your TV-on-Demand settings. TV-on-Demand lets you pause live TV feeds at will, and resume them when you come back, just like pausing a video or DVD. Obviously it needs some kind of storage to capture the TV while you are absent, and so you set quality settings here. Higher quality means more CPU usage and disk space obviously. You get an estimate of the buffer duration you have available on the disk drive you set for TV-on-Demand. You can change it, but initially it defaults to the drive containing Windows. That's the initial TV configuration done. Bring up the TV applet or press the TV button on the remote to check it found your channels OK. More on that later. Accessing the settings dialog while using the TV brings up what you see above. You can set output formats to standard 4:3 or the other common anamorphic widescreen resolutions, along with choosing what happens when you minimise a TV window. Setting 'Non Fixed' lets you run silly proportioned video windows on the desktop. The hardware scales it admirably, but you are best sticking to a proper output format. The what happens when minimised setting is useful for setting ThruView, more on that later. You also get a hotkey for hiding the player, useful for watching TV at work when the boss is around maybe? The remote or mouse is usually used otherwise, but you might be a supreme keyboard user. Other interesting options include what happens to any stills you capture. You can setup stills capture using the remote (more on that later) or a mouse click, and you get to choose any sequential naming conventions and a directory for output. You also get access to the PVR settings in this tabbed dialog too. What's a PVR? The next page will explain.