ATI HDTV Wonder and windows update

Got the card plugged in and here are the hardware ids.

A very good reason to have the drivers yourself is , who knows if they might disappear from the web.

got everything installed.
all it needs for 32 bit are 2 downloads.

ATI Technologies, Inc - Video - ATI DTV Wonder Digital Tuner Device 9850520.cab
Microsoft Update Catalog
9850520.cab

ATI DTV Wonder Digital BDA Capture Device 10331996.cab
Microsoft Update Catalog

luckily I already downloaded them, BECAUSE the first one, my link is dead!!

Card works very well with WMC in windows 7.
Glad I got it.

The ATI driver is a cab file and was listed for XP.
You have to extract it first with winzip etc....
Then in device manager click update driver and point to the location of the extracted files.

I zipped up the ATI XP driver files and included one 64 bit beta one. I do not have win 7 64 on this PC.

I dont know if these drivers are on the ATI site anymore seeing how old the card is.

Glad you got the right software for the card. It's pretty interesting that while none of it says it's usable with Win7 (even 32-bit) but rather is intended for XP, that your experience confirms that of others as you've described... and that it DOES work with 32-bit Win7.

Interestingly, the sets of driver files you pointed to on the MS Update Catalog site seem to be older versions: (1) Version: 3.0.83.2026, Version Date: 1/31/2005 and (2) Version: 3.0.83.2030, Version Date: 3/3/2005.

In contrast, the existing ATI driver site (for the official current XP version) which was pointed to by Stormy13 is a bit newer. Running the self-extracting installer file for the "HDTV Wonder Drivers v6.1" and then looking inside the resulting INF in the expanded folders, it is described as "DriverVer=09/26/2005, 3.0.83.2036".

Furthermore, when I myself did a search on the MS Update Catalog site for pci\ven_14f1&dev_8800&subsys_a1011002 (and 8801 and 8802) and downloaded everything which returned, I got the identical most recent 3.0.83.2036 versions which match the current ATI drivers. I don't know why you retrieved the older versions from the MS Update Catalog site.




Trying to use the downloaded official ATI WDM installer file (in self-extracting self-running EXE form) seems to at least get started on my 64-bit Win7 system (which is how I expanded it, to look at the imbedded INF) although I obviously canceled it and didn't let it actually run the SETUP.EXE past the initial screen.

As to whether it would actually successfully self-install the five drivers (for the five ATI DTV devices ultimately shown in your Device Manager screenshot) if allowed to run in your 32-bit Win7 system, well I don't know.

But certainly the same set of INF etc. files you downloaded from the MS Update Catalog site (or, certainly the 2036 latest version if you go after it again) and then used to install the drivers in your 32-bit Win7 system is also contained in the self-expanded result of running the ATI installer file to produce the expanded folders, even if you don't complete the official ATI installation itself in Win7.


Nevertheless, glad your story ended with success and that your ATI DTV Wonder card is now working properly with WMC on your older+smaller 32-bit Win7 system, and that you can actually tune to digital channels and record programs. Oh, and it's NOT an "All In Wonder" card containing both graphics and TV tuner. It's just a "DTV Wonder" tuner card. It's original eBay listing was definitely not quite accurate.

In the end, this was obviously the goal.

P.S. - if you're ever looking to upgrade to a dual-tuner card, I can highly recommend the Hauppauge HVR-2250. Two OTA/ATSC tuners, and works perfectly with WMC 64-bit. I don't use the WinTV app that Hauppauge provides, because I depend on WMC and WMC extenders to remote HDTV's around my home. Plus, I already use WMC with a Ceton InfiniTV4 cablecard-enabled 4-tuner card to support access to my Time Warner Cable copy-freely and copy-protected content. And WMC supports both TV tuner cards simultaneously (i.e. I have SIX tuners, 2 for OTA/ATSC and 4 for cable).

Hi dsperber, how did you search the update site by hand like that?
I would really like to know.:)

I did my limited search using Google advanced search and the domain name.
I also don't know why one of my earlier working driver links died.
I manually ran the updates in windows 7 and it showed an analog one for the card so installed it.

Yes working great, I have all my local channels, and the streaming is smooth with no glitches.

This is on a 478 pentium 2.8 ghz cpu and PM8M-v ver2 MB.
I have an HD2600 PRO video card without which it might not work.
Before I got the tuner and the HDTV card, I had an old slow geforce 6200 and it could not play Netflix at all.
That card did easily play the recorded 1080p wtv files from another WMC. I have this pc linked by gigabit lan to another WMC PC for storage, so my little 80gb IDE drive is all it needs. So when I record on this, the file ends up on the other PC. I wonder what happens if the other PC and this PC try to record the same HDTV channel at the same time? East to do that if your setting WMC to record a series.

When I go there Using ubuntu linux, I see this screen. Is that why?

sdowney717 said:

Hi dsperber, how did you search the update site by hand like that?
I would really like to know.

You MUST be using Internet Explorer on a Windows OS, not any other browser or any other OS. If you use any other method to get there the site will reject it and present some type of alternative response which won't let you do a driver download yourself.

You get to the main page through its portal URL but again, it MUST be using IE on a Windows system. Very often the search results show two or three seemingly identical items, each offering you to download that driver package. Although not annotated as such, these are generally for x86, x64, and IA64 target machine environments. If you download all of them and look at the file name of the ZIP, you'll see which is which.

Then just enter the hardware id info in the "search" field. That's why I had previously asked you if the card was installed (and probably currently showing yellow exclamation marks if the drivers had not yet been installed successfully).

So as I mentioned in my earlier post, once you provided the hardware id I entered it in the "search" field:

pci\ven_14f1&dev_8800&subsys_a1011002

Press ENTER, and the response is that screenshot I posted above. I pushed the "add all" button to add everything shown (or I could have pushed "add" on individual items) to my download basket, then "view basket", then pushed the "download" button to launch a second download window, then pushed "browse" to let me specify a target folder for the downloads, and then pushed the "continue" button to initiate the download of all selected files into the specified target folder.

I like that MS will let you do that, get a copy of the drivers.
I had always thought you had to use the builtin windows update.
Thanks for the info.

That old PC has been on for 2 days and no problems. My total cost to upgrade was $67 including the tuner card. I buy mostly off ebay looking to get bargains. A core2duo setup would have been as much as $90 after video card, memory, mb, cpu. I tend to keep PC's and parts a long time. And this case and MB came off the street, PS had failed, all sorts of personal stuff, people should be more careful.

I may dual boot this with ubuntu to see how mythtv works. The tuner is supported in linux.
Wife is very tech challenged, WMC is easy to use and still she complains, just wants to turn it on and switch channels like old style TV used to be. Also does not think much of Dolby 5.1 surround sound. She says it is all to complicated.

The driver does have an issue, if the PC goes to sleep, the HDTV card does not wake up.
I have to turn it all the way off then on. Then it works again.

Sleep state, can it be adjusted for various devices, like put PC to sleep but keep card awake?
I will test hibernate.

could i get some help, when i go to the device manager and try to install the drivers i go to the folder where the drivers r but they do not appear, not sure y, i am running windows 7 pro 64 bit and had it working previously before i reinstalled windows 7 i even got it to work yesterday by just choosing to find the drivers online through device manager, but now that wont work, windows is so damn inconsistent i swear thank u all in advance