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TV Modes

The TV tuner built into the All-In-Wonder product is an analog television tuner that can receive standard VHF and UHF signals or analog cable broadcasts with the appropriate antenna or connection. The first time you run the TV application, a wizard will be launched to help configure the tuner and application settings. One of the important things mentioned in the wizard is the audio connection.

The video card acts as an audio pass through for the TV tuner and video capture. So in order for the audio to function, the external audio pass through cable must be plugged into the line-in jack on the computer's audio card or the internal audio connector must be connected from the video card to the auxiliary connection of the audio card. If the computer does not have one of these audio connections, the TV will have picture but no audio.

Along with the TV application, there is the Gemstar Guide+ TV listing software that is integral to the EASYLOOK functions. This application downloads TV listings based on your television service and location to provide up to a week's worth of programming schedules. While using this application, it is also possible to watch the TV tuner in the upper left corner. This application is ad supported with two ads displayed on the left side of the programming window.

One of the outstanding features of the All-In-Wonder software bundle is the video recording capability. Video can be captured and stored to the hard drive for later viewing or through time shifted display similar to a personal video recorder. Programs can be scheduled for recording through the TV listings or by browsing the listings with the remote control via EASYLOOK. The programming can be stored in the ATI VCR format that provides high quality with low file sizes or the more standard MPEG standards. The MPEG standard is the choice to use if you would like to record the programs onto CD or DVD.

FM Tuner

One of the major additions to the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro is the inclusion of an FM tuner. A simple FM antenna is necessary in order to use the tuner. Once installed, simply load up the FM player tool to start listening to the radio. Of course, finding stations will be a bit more of a challenge than the TV tuner. First it does not have an autoscan feature like the TV player. This means you must manually tune them in.

There is a simple step function of up and down which will adjust the tuner up or down by .1 frequency increments. The real problem lies with the scan up and down buttons. First, when you press either of these buttons, the tuner will continue to scan up or down until the button is pressed again. The second problem seems to be the speed at which it tunes to the next station. During my testing, it could take literally a minute for it to scan from two channels that are only 2 frequency steps apart. If you happen to know the station you want to tune into, it is possible to use the menu to setup a preset station.

Similar to the TV recording functions, the FM tuner also has an on-demand feature for scheduled recording or time delayed playback. Recordings are restricted to the MP3 format with a fixed 224 Kbps constant bit rate. This isn't much of a problem since the MP3 format is very portable, but the bit rate is much higher than is required for FM radio quality sound.

Video Capture

With the increasing popularity of DVD burners and digital video, the ability to edit and burn your own DVDs is something that a lot of people are interested in. This is one area where the All-In-Wonder card really excels. The card's video input box allows for a video source from pretty much any type of video device that uses RCA or S-Video connectors. For testing, I used a Laser Disc player and some movies to test capturing of high quality video signals for editing and burning. Image quality of the recorded video was very good.

Included with the All-In-Wonder card is the Pinnacle Studio 8 video editing software package. This program makes it easy to record video through the input channels to the hard drive. They can be recorded in a variety of formats and quality levels to get the best file sizes for the source material and for the eventual output level. It is also possible to select the TV programs that have been recorded through the TV tuner for editing if the MPEG format was used for the recording. ATI's VCR format is not supported by the Pinnacle software.

The All-In-Wonder truly shines as a video capture board. The included software allows for a wide range of options for editing and outputting the digital video. Its not as full featured as some more professional software packages, but it should be enough for the home user. It should be noted that video editing is very system intensive. Editing large video files requires a fast processor, large amounts of memory and hard drive space. Even with this, expect to spend lots of time waiting for captures, conversions and output.

Graphics Performance

So how does the card perform for 3D gaming? To be honest, I only ran a few tests on the board to compare it to the standard Radeon 9600 Pro graphics card. In the end, the graphics results were practically identical to the standard boards. The All-In-Wonder does have a slight edge in some games and tasks thanks to its 650MHz memory clock speed. Those interested in benchmarks numbers can check out the second part of the Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro review for rough estimates of its performance.

Overclocking

ATI does not provided any software for overclocking the All-In-Wonder video card. They have recently started to include an overclocking function in the Catalyst 3.8 drivers to use with the 9800XT line of cards. In order to overclock the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro, a utility such as RadClocker is required. For the purpose of overclocking the board, I used this utility along with looped benchmark demos to test the stability of the board under stressed 3D operation.

ATI's RV350 core has been well known for its overclocking ability. In my review of the Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro, the graphics core reached a speed of 528 MHz and the memory speed of 351 MHz. The memory speeds were disappointing in that case because of the 350MHz rated memory used. The All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600 Pro also uses the same graphics core and 2.8ns memory as the Sapphire board so expectations were good.

In the end, I was surprised at the results. The All-In-Wonder's graphics core was not able to get as high, reaching only 501 MHz. This is still an impressive 25% overclock of the graphics core. Memory speeds were more impressive reaching 375MHz, a 15% increase in the clock. This resulted in an overall speed increase of up to 18% in some benchmarks.

Conclusions

In the end, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600 Pro is a excellent product with one major flaw. This card excels at the multimedia functions of TV tuner and video capture. It even has features such as an FM tuner and multi monitor support that cannot be found on other integrated multimedia cards. Performance under 3D applications is superb for a card in this price category. The included software and features are exceptional. It even includes a card to redeem for a copy of the upcoming Half-Life 2 video game from Valve.

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Anyone looking to create a home theatre system or even for a multimedia card would be well served. But there is the one problem that remains. The card does not support DVI connections. This isn't so much of a problem now as few monitors available now feature a DVI only connection, but it will become more common in the future. Still, this is an excellent card for the price.