HDTV

Dell had a sale on the ATI HDTV Wonder, so I picked one up and installed it into the HTPC. Here are a few notes. (Updated, 7/3)

1) HD reception is pretty good at Teele Square. I can pull in around 20 HD channels, according to the "auto-scan" feature.

2) Most of those channels only broadcast in 480p, though.

3) And most of the HD channels are in 1080i.

4) I'm using the HDTV Wonder with a DirectX 8 card (Matrox Millenium P750). The specs say it requires a DirectX9-capable card. This may be the cause of a few debilitating issues.

5) The first issue: I can see the picture only on 480P or 720P broadcasts. I get sound for 1080i, but no picture.

6) The second issue: The HD picture only appears on the main monitor (an LCD, through DVI out). No matter what I do, I cannot get the picture to appear on the second monitor, which is hooked up to the projector.

7) The third issue: My picture pauses every few minutes, each time the PC is doing something like accessing the hard drive. This may be either because of my video card, or because my machine is only 3GHz.