Blogging productivity (an oxymoron?) is down following the installation of my new ATI TV Wonder Pro, a TV capture card that has brought the curse miracle of television to my computer monitor. I used to have to get up out of my computer chair and walk some ten steps through the kitchen in order to see the TV in the family room. With rare exceptions, this only happened when there was a game on involving a ball of some sort, in which I had a rooting interest. What's that, 363 days a year? The trip also offered the only chance to interact with my wife during the evening hours, even if that was limited to a kiss on the top of her sleepy head.
Her reaction when I opened this gift from my son on Christmas Day was predictable. "Now I'll never get you out of your computer chair". The woman is psychic, it turns out.
I realize these TV tuner cards aren't new (although some of the accompanying software may be) but I've been putting it through its paces, and there are enough cool features to keep me amused for hours. On top of all that, it's been NFL playoff crunch time and Capitol One Bowl Week all wrapped into one for the last ten days. I think I remember briefly embracing my wife at midnight on Friday. Something about a new year.
The thing installs in a minute in a PCI slot, and you just split the incoming broadband cable right in front of the cable modem, and run it to the card. I'm not using any booster/amplifier on it and am getting good results. Whether I'm full-screen or running a tiny 2x2 window in the corner of my browser, or any size in between, the picture is great and I've got a choice of mouse or keyboard commands for channel and volume. As I write this, the National Championship game is out of control, so I'm just grabbing a few select screen shots for demo purposes. I don't suppose I have the express written consent of ABC for any rebroadcast or other use of their telecast, so I'll not post any of the video stuff I've captured tonight. I'm sure Oklahoma would like the entire video to self-destruct anyway.
The software includes a web-based, on-screen program listing guide, with the capability to pre-schedule the recording of shows, a la DVR or VCR, and a choice of video file formats to select (mpeg, avi, Windows Media, and a proprietary ATI format). Or the capability to preview all of your available channels at once in tiny windows on your screen, and watch 10-second mini-previews of any of them.
I know nothing of video from a technical standpoint, so my DVD burner has been unused since I bought the machine, until I began experimenting with it using the newly captured video files. Now I'm scheming on the kinds of things I can commit to disc that I can grab from TV (for my personal use of course).
But all the video capturing and DVD burning aside, I am amazed at how much more TV I am willing to watch when I am one mouse-click instead of ten steps away.
Posted by dan at January 4, 2005 10:07 PM