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ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner

spectre51

spectre51

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 25, 2008
311
3
I just got one of these from a friend who never used it. He didn't have any of the software with it. I'm wondering if I can use this with my Mac as looking at the website it looks like its just for windows vista. Anyone know of a program that I can use ni Mac OS X with this tuner?

http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html
 
Just go back to your friend and ask for a roll of red tape, cuz that's all you'll be getting with this device.

Right off the bat, as far as I know, you can't use this on a Mac, a custom rig, or 99% of the OEM machines available today.

Refer to this article (http://techreport.com/discussions.x/11564) as to why. You'll need a custom bios, custom drivers and an activation code for windows media center.

Apple wasn't even apart of the talks for the production of this device, probably because they have their own products (AppleTV, iTunes etc).
 
Yeh thats what I was figuring after looking at a few sites. Now I read somewhere it should work as a QAM tuner without the extra bios stuff and activation codes. I have Vista Business though so I am installing vista ultimate in a vitrual machine to try and check. At the very least if I can use this as a tuner for ATSC and NTSC that will be fine.
 
spectre51 said:
.... At the very least if I can use this as a tuner for ATSC and NTSC that will be fine.
Click to expand...
There are wonderful digital OTA/cable TV tuners that support the Mac. What is so great about this device that you would rather jump through hoops to get it to work rather than using a different product that works out of the box?
 
nothing is so great about it other than I got it free. So if I can get it working with minimal effect as a ota tuner then great if not then no big loss.
 
The device worked as a ota tuner in windows but I haven't tried using that software to make the computer appear digital cable ready. I don't have bootcamp setup so I can't try it that way.
 
Glad to hear you are having some successes. Still, if you can't tune encrypted HD thats half the fun!
 
ok, one more time I want to try reviving this thread. Now that Microsoft has formally launched the digital cable advisory tool (http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4361&Itemid=1) and ATI has updated the firmware on the digital cable tuner, I see no reason why a mac running Windows 7 in bootcamp or in virtualization couldn't utilize the external ATI tuner for Windows Media Center. But I'm wondering if anyone on this forum has a mac and access to one of these tuners to give it a try before I get too excited and go buy one. Anyone?
 
I will hook it up to my PC and see how well it works with windows 7. Will work the exact same as a mac running bootcamp. I don't have windows 7 on my macbook with parallels but maybe I'll try setting that up instead of my vista vm.
 
spectre, that would be sweet if you could give it a whirl using windows on parallels or vm. I would most likely use one of those two options rather than bootcamp since you would need windows running all the time in order for the program guide and record functions to work properly. That way you could be running mac apps in one window and have parallels with media center and ati cable card tuner running in another window. Wonder what kind of a drain on the system it would be to have windows 7 up continuously.
 
Well I got the thing working with my windows 7 PC no problem other than find the right channels for the HD stations it detects.....for some reason it finds the 700 stations (which are the HD stations) and I can't view them but then lists them again as 1008.7## and I can view them there but no guide info. I really don't like media center.

On the Macbook with parallels and a fresh windows 7 install it wouldn't start the device. It kept saying the device cannot start. I will play around with it a bit more and see what I can find. Still messing with it on the windows pc to see if I can get the channels all working right.

I'll post more as I play with this thing.
 
spectre51 said:
Well I got the thing working with my windows 7 PC no problem other than find the right channels for the HD stations it detects.....for some reason it finds the 700 stations (which are the HD stations) and I can't view them but then lists them again as 1008.7## and I can view them there but no guide info. I really don't like media center.

On the Macbook with parallels and a fresh windows 7 install it wouldn't start the device. It kept saying the device cannot start. I will play around with it a bit more and see what I can find. Still messing with it on the windows pc to see if I can get the channels all working right.

I'll post more as I play with this thing.
Click to expand...


Cool, good info. I think you see some HD stations twice because the unlocked channels like network (NBC, CBS, etc) all broadcast in clear QAM as well and they get that funny xxxx.x notation for a channel listing. Look forward to hearing more from you as you play around with it a little.
 
Got my missing channels things taken care of. Had to manually add 5-6 channels using the information found from: http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/channels_us Once I did that was able to put move them around and match them up to what I had showing on the EyeTV and stuff.

Tried again on the MacBook using Parallels but couldn't get the device to run. Would always say device could not start in device manager. So I guess if you really wanna run it then it would have to be through bootcamp on the mac.


As a side note anyone interested in buying this Cablecard ready TV tuner or trading for a EyeTV tuner?
 
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