There are a lot of TV-Tuners designed for the Macintosh currently available on the market, each with their own benefits and draw backs. AMD introduced the ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo tuner for the Mac. Despite the long name the tuner looks extremely promising for AMD's initial introduction to the Mac market. The Wonder 650, first of all is a USB 2.0, dual tuner device that can recieve both Analog, and ATSC/HDTV broadcasts. Before you runout and buy one, the down side is, it will only handle one of them on each tuner.

The reciever features several enhancements to make optimize you viewing experience. The advanced 3D Comb filter, Edge Enhancement technology and Noise Reduction filters analog signals produce a pure image that is suppose to rival high-end HD sets. The ATI Theater Digital TV allows upt o 720p (1080i) broadcasts.

The hardware, however is only as good as the software that supports it. AMD provides ATI tvPortal to interact with the Wonder 650. The software is provides full PVR and time-shifting capabilities, allowing you to fast forward, rewind or pause live analog tv. TV shows are recorded in MPEG-2, while watching TV with the dual tuner functionality. An onscreen Electronic Program Guide provides you with the a listing of all the shows, as well as the ability to schedule recordings. We have not had the privilege to test this software, but from the screen shots and description its appears to rival EyeTV, with the exception of a full screen mode and FrontRow interaction, which for a media center is a major draw back.


The Wonder 650 requires a G4 processor or better with native USB 2.0, and 512MB of RAM. This is great for the older HTPC systems out there, or for those individuals on a budget. However for dual tuner support they recommend a Dual G5 or Intel processors combod with at least 1GB of RAM. This is great for those of you that adobted intel systems, but puts older G4 users out of luck for dual tuner support. It would be nice if the G4 could handle it, but there comes a time, when these systems need to be retired or turned into file servers.

The AMB ATI TV Wonder 650 is available for $150 now, and can be purchased through VisionTek