Sunnyvale (CA) – AMD announced two new add-in cards and a new external combo tuner in its TV Wonder series, which promise to equip a PC with the capability of a high-definition digital video recorder.

AMD is introducing a bit more spice to PC TV tuner market with new models that are introducing several new features and are answering the market trend towards different usage models between desktop PCs and notebooks.

If you prefer to go the traditional way and install a TV tuner card in your PC, AMD now offers the ATI TV Wonder 600 and the Wonder 650 Combo as PCI/PCIe models. The 600 is positioned as a new entry-level model for a suggested retail price of $99 and provides pretty much everything YOU would expect from such a device, including digital PVR features, support for OTA DTV, NTSC, DVD playback and authoring and video conversion.

Two major differences set the 600 (available as PCI/PCIe x1 version) and the 650 (PCI), which sells for $129, apart. The 600 lacks the 650’s hardware-based MPEG-2 acceleration and the 600 integrates a hybrid tuner, while the 650 comes with a combo tuner. It’s an often confusing detail : Both can handle analog and digital signals, but hybrid tuner devices can record or tune only one signal at a time, which makes them the basic version of today’s tuner cards in the market. In contrast, a combo tuner integrates separate analog and digital tuners on a device that can be used independently from each other.

All new products include support for unencrypted digital TV (ClearQAM) and allow users to convert recordings of unrestricted TV programs for viewing on portable media players such as the Apple iPhone, Microsoft Zune, Palm Treo or Sony PSP.

Probably the most interesting new product is the TV Wonder 650 Combo, which essentially houses a 650 Combo card in an external box that can be connected via USB 2.0 to a notebook or desktop PC. The box sells for $149 and has the same feature set as the 650 Combo add-in card.

A bit surprising to us was the fact that, given the TV Wonder 650 Combo’s target market of notebook computers, that the device does not include wireless capability. Notebooks tend to be carried around the house and there seems to be little use for a TV box that has to be dragged around with the computer itself. AMD told us that such a feature may be added in the future, but it is not on the roadmap right now.

All three TV Wonders are shipping now and are offered under the “VisionTek” brand at BestBuy stores and “other retail outlets”, AMD said.