Digital Trends

ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro

December 2nd, 2003 | by Jeff Fila

DVD Viewing
 

Most video cards today can handle DVDs without much problems and that's the same with the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro. ATI has been known for their high-quality 2-d video as well as their 3-d graphics and this card is no different. 

We tested with the old favorite test movie, The Matrix, and the card handled the high action “lobby scene” with no problems whatsoever. Skipping through chapters, pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding were a breeze with the Remote Wonder.

Unfortunately DVD viewing was not perfect all of the time. Two times in a row our test computer locked up when we were viewing the title page of The Matrix in a window and we tried to move or resize the window. It happened a few other times, but not consistently.

FM Radio On Your Desktop
 

As we mentioned earlier, the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro features an FM tuner. It is integrated into the TV tuner and there is a coax connector on the video card that can hook up to an antenna. The antenna is required, but not included with the product so you'll have to purchase one if you want to listen to the radio on your PC. 

We purchased an indoor FM radio antenna from Radio Shack for $9.99. We're not sure if it was the antenna or the tuner, but it was tough getting all of our stations. It wasn't that the antenna wasn't powerful enough — it almost seemed like it was too powerful. We had a tough time getting all of the channels that we normally got in our vehicles or homes. Channels that are in close proximity in frequency to each other often “bled” into the next channel. Because of this, we weren't able to get good reception on many channels that were easily tuned with even a handheld mp3 player with a built in FM tuner. 

As a result, scanning for FM channels was useless since a “station” was picked up at almost every frequency. Volume was also an issue and no matter what settings we tried, it was always lower than the desktop volume. 

As with TV, the All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro allows you to “time shift” FM radio. You can pause live radio and resume where you left off. You can also schedule it to record specific stations when you want. We really looked forward to this feature but we just weren't able to do it with the antenna we had. 

The FM tuner uses the same on-screen interface as the TV tuner does. We thought the tuner skin that ATI provides as a default was hard to read and looked a bit amateurish.

The default tuner skin for all multimedia applications.

Another bad selection for “default” is that the FM audio is set to “mono” mode. You have to go into the settings to select “stereo” mode to listen to your radio stations in stereo. Are there even any FM radio stations that broadcast in mono anymore? Don't answer, that was a rhetorical question.

The FM tuner has 10 presets that you can name whatever you want. Tuning was again a chore. It appears that the Remote Wonder buttons are quite finicky, because at times we were able to hold down a button to scan, when other times, we had to repeatedly push the button to change channels. If this happens and you want to go from one end of the spectrum to the other, be prepared to do a lot of clicking. Unfortunately, the number buttons on the remote do not work to switch channels, which would have made a lot of sense. One other annoying aspect of the FM tuner is that the application must be the active window in order for you to adjust the volume or change the channel. If you are working with the radio on in the background, you must switch to the FM tuner application in order to make these adjustments.