ATI announces the new ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO

After much speculation, today ATI made it offical, with the announcement of the ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO that many of you have been waiting for. It will offer all of the features that you have come to expect in the ALL-IN-WONDER product line such as mulTView for dual TV tuner support and 128MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory. It of course will be powered by the RADEON 9700 PRO VPU (visual processor unit) graphics chip with cutting edge 2D and 3D graphics performance.

ATI's new flagship multimedia video card, ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO, will be available this fall for less than USD$500 and will complement the currently shipping ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV at USD$199 and the value-priced ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 7500 at USD$149.

"With dual TV tuner support, we've delivered a major customer-requested feature," said Godfrey Cheng, Director of Marketing, Multimedia Products, ATI Technologies Inc. "ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO delivers many great new features that elevate the Home Theater PC to a brand new level. ATI continues to pack the most excitement into one easily installable solution for maximum performance, features and stability - no other multimedia video card can deliver this much entertainment."

"ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO is designed around the critically acclaimed RADEON 9700 PRO - the industry's first visual processing unit - to deliver top performance, even for hard-core gamers," said Blair Birmingham, Group Product Manager, TV PC Multimedia Products, ATI Technologies Inc. "This groundbreaking graphics chip includes Microsoft DirectX 9.0 support, our VIDEOSHADER engine and video compression for an extremely high quality video experience. We created ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO for the customer who wants to get the best multimedia experience out of their computer for gaming, video editing and enhanced TV viewing.

"We're also delivering on the high resolution visual experience in the family room by providing Component Output capabilities (YPrPb) with this product. ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO enables unique support for a non-interlaced display in the family room for DVD, personal video recording (PVR), gaming and other Windows-based applications."

ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO offers the following features:

- ATI's MULTIMEDIA CENTER 8.0 software - In addition to a full range of critically-acclaimed multimedia functions such as a free integrated program guide (North America only) from Gemstar-TV Guide's GUIDE Plus+ and enhanced TV-ON-DEMAND PVR for instant replays, pausing live TV or recording live broadcasts for later viewing.

- MulTView - Enables dual TV tuner capabilities such as Picture-in-Picture when combined with ATI-TV WONDER or TV WONDER VE.

- THRUVIEW - Allows for translucent viewing of TV, DVD and video file playback.

- VIDEOSOAP - Delivers advanced filtering to reduce noise, improve sharpness and soften focus as desired to provide the highest quality video compression for PVR and personal video editing functions.

- FULLSTREAM - Uses pixel shaders, based on innovative technology in RADEON 9700 PRO, to remove blocky artifacts from streaming video and provides sharper image quality and greater scalability.

- Closed Caption Search within TV-ON-DEMAND complements the popular "Hotwords" functionality with the PVR allowing the computer to search for content of interest whether it happens in the future or the recent past.

- Pinnacle Video Studio 8 - Offers powerful features for video editing.

- Matchware Mediator 7 - Enables the ability to combine text, pictures, videos and sounds to build stunning presentations in a few minutes.

- ATI's THEATER 200 - Provides exceptional video and stereo audio quality viewing during live TV and video input and capture - all based on technologies from ATI's digital television research and development.

- VIDEOSHADER - Uses programmable pixel shader technology to accelerate video processing and provide better-looking visuals.

- REMOTE WONDER - Offers remote control via RF (radio frequency) for instant easy access to all the multimedia features (TV, video, DVD - and more) from any other room in the house or office (requires USB - universal serial bus).

- RADEON 9700 PRO VPU and 128MB (megaByte) DDR memory - Designed for advanced 3D graphics and gaming.

- Component Video output via a YprPb adapter (available in North America only) - Connects to the big screen TV in the family room at high resolution with optimized viewing modes.

- Stereo TV-tuner with 125 channels.

- Analog video capture and editing in MPEG-2 format at up to 720x480 30 frames-per-second resolution.

- DVD video playback with Dolby AC-3 digital audio.

- Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL.

- Backed by quality ATI customer support and a 3-year limited warranty, ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO supports Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me, and Windows 98/98 SE (Windows Me driver can be installed on Windows 98/98SE).

Although the announcement really comes as no surprise, as many of you have been asking about it. From what we can tell the AIW 9700 Pro brings a lot of great features to the party that will help you add to the video experience of your computer. We can't really offer much thought on the performance of the card until we finish testing it, but we are encouraged by the mix of new features along with the fully developed features that have made its way over from the AIW 8500. If you are into video it does appear that this could be the must have card, but with a steep introductory price of $500 it will be expensive. If you are a barging shopper, it would appear that there will be a lot of good deals on the AIW 8500 which should be priced at $199 or less.