ATI TV Wonder 650 recalled?

We just reported that ATI's TV Wonder 650 would be reaching store shelves near you, but it may be retreating just as quickly. According to reports received by DailyTech, ATI has yanked the cards due to a possible problem with the OTA tuner limiting it to less than half of the promised channels. The TV Wonder 200 that launched at the same time apparently is unaffected and can still be found on Best Buy and CompUSA's websites, while the TV Wonder 650 has disappeared. Those looking for a good OTA HDTV tuner with the hardware encoding capabilities of ATI's Theater 650 chip will apparently have to keep waiting.

[icemorebutts Posted Aug 28th 2006 10:03PM]

I just bought this thing on saturday, but rather than be angery I'm hoping that they'll just send me a new card so I can have 2 tuners. That would be real nice as I don't have an antenna to hook the thing up to.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 29th 2006 5:35AM]

Ahh, ATI. Did you expect a good product delivery? Is this Vista 63-1/2 bit certified, too?

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 5th 2006 9:25AM]

After installing the ATI TV Wonder 650 it did not pick up any of the local digital signals. Also, the pc would not boot with the dongle installed. If the dongle was installed after booting, the pc would crash.

I called ATI Customer Care for help. They told me to go to their knowledge base web site to read the corrective actions.

The "help" involved requiring you to install an amplified antenna.

I have been using an external yagi beam antenna for years without an antenna amplifer to collect the Houston Texas HDTV signal for my over the air tuner from Dish Network.

I purchased and installed the amplifier Per ATI's instructions and still the ATI TV Wonder 650 would not recognize any local HDTV signals. The dongle crashes were repeatable.

I called the ATI customer care center and advised them of my problems and they told me to return the card to Best Buy.

Sure was a lot of wasted time and money.

Thanks ATI!