AMD's Newest TV Wonder: Clear QAM For The Masses

AMD's New TV Wonder Line Up and Initial Thoughts

The TV Wonder cards available before today have been what AMD calls "hybrid" tuners and they do not support digital cable. They do support digital TV through OTA ATSC (HD content) and analog TV through either OTA or cable. The hybrid tuner is capable of watching or recording either analog or digital content, but is only one physical tuner (only one channel can be watched or recorded at any given time).

AMD's new TV Wonder parts that support Clear QAM make use of "combo" tuners - the board supports analog and digital content through two separate onboard tuners that can be used at the same time. The only issue here is that one tuner is a dedicated analog tuner and the other is a dedicated digital tuner. This means that if you are watching an analog channel, you can only record a digital channel (either OTA ATSC or Clear QAM). Likewise, if you are watching a digital channel you can only record an analog channel (either OTA or cable).

The combo tuners are a bit more flexible, but we would love it if AMD could find a way to produce boards with a cross between the hybrid and combo tuner concept to bring us a board with two tuners that can record either analog or digital channels. Really, the only way to go with the TV Wonder series for use in an HTPC is to plug multiple boards into one system. With two TV Wonder 650 Combo Tuner cards, it's possible to watch one channel and record any other channel no matter what you're watching.

We haven't gotten our hands on any hardware yet, so we will have to wait to make any firm conclusions about the new TV Wonder lineup, but Clear QAM is certainly a step in the right direction. In the meantime, we can absolutely complain about AMD's naming scheme. Sorting out product names to more clearly denote the capabilities of the hardware would go a long way with us. As it stands, the USB TV Wonder 600 does not support Clear QAM, while the PCI TV Wonder 600 does. This is in contrast to the fact that the PCI TV Wonder 650 does not support Clear QAM, while the USB and PCIe TV Wonder 650 Combo versions do support Clear QAM.

Take a look at this chart for clarification:



The TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner is the only one of these that supports the cable card, but our initial experience with it was somewhat less than impressive. AMD has mentioned to us that a firmware update is available that should significantly improve performance and stability. We will certainly look into this to determine if there's anything new worth writing about with respect to OCUR.

We will also try to take a look at the new TV Wonder series down the road and see how it stacks up against the competition from Hauppauge and Pinnacle. While Clear QAM is good news for HTPC enthusiasts, we still have a long way to go before the PC gets the respect it deserves from music, movie and cable industry players as a device that can (and should) rule the living room.