Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 USB Review

Testing:

To test the Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 USB, I will be judging it based its functions, image quailty, and ease of use.

 

Testing Setup:

• Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.20GHz
  
• Motherboard: ECS 890GXM-A 890GX
• Memory: 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 @ 9-9-9-27
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 260 (216)
• Power Supply: ZALMAN ZM750-HP 750W
• Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 7200.11 750GB SATA w/ 32MB Cache
• Optical Drive: Lite-On 8x DVD+/-RW
• OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition
• Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 2443BWX 24"
• Dimaond ATI TV Wonder 750 USB

 

 

Functionality

The functions you will find in the TotalMedia application are the usual Media Center options, such as a TV guide, an option to set a schedule to record a TV program, the option to watch a TV program, and a few portable options. The TV Guide will allow you to see what is currently on the available channels and give you the option to set the listing as a favorite, record it, or watch it. Recording a program is extremely easy and from within the menu, you can set a time and channel to record. After the program is recorded, it will be viewable in the Record TV menu, which will list your recordings, making them easy to access. TotalMedia also comes with the ability to sync up with portable devices to transfer files and will work with iPod video, Sony PSP, Windows Mobile Devices, Creative Zen Vision Zen, and a SanDisk Sansa e200. Other functions that are available are the ability to view photos, listen to the radio, and watch videos.

 

 

 

 

 

Picture Quality

The HDTV quality from the TV Wonder is absolutely phenomenal, easily matching the HD content I watch though my cable receiver. The standard video is also very decent, but it does have some grain.

 

HD Video

 

SD Video

 

For the analog picture quality, I had a previous review to pull from, so I could get a good idea of how the image looks compared to other models. For the most part, the image from the Diamond ATI TV Wonder was clear, with only a minimal amount of grain. This made the quality much higher than the noisy image from the XtremeTV HD and slightly better than the Theater 550.

  

Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 USB

 

XtremeTV HDTV 110 Analog

 

Theater 550 PCI-e Analog

 

 

AV cable Use:

The included AV dongle will let you connect the tuner to an alternative source, such as a DVD player, Camcorder, Video game system, or just about any source with a RCA output. There is also a S-Video connector on the dongle, which, when used, will improve the image quality. This feature can be used to watch videos or record yourself fragging your friends. To show off this function, you get to watch Little Mac put a beat down on poor Van Kaiser!

 

 

CPU Usage:

 

The Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 CPU usage was minimal in both High Definition and Standard Definition. For HD content, the CPU usage was around 11% and at times would peak close to 20%. While recording the video using the dongle, the CPU usage was again low, staying under 10%. Also, when taking into account any running background programs, it is impressive to see such low CPU usage.