ATI's ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV

Well, we told you about this card way back in August , but since it's finally out on the streets, we might as well reiterate the details. ATI today announced that the ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV multimedia graphics board is now shipping to retail stores in North America. With a manufacturer's suggested list price of (U.S.) $399, the card is far from cheap, but since it can provide you with TiVo-like functionality, it could be a good place to start if you're planning on putting together a home-grown answer to the set-top box. The ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV gives you an IEEE 1394 standard DV (digital video) connection, remote control via RF (radio frequency), and ATI Multimedia Center 7.5 - which gives you a DVD Player, TV with integrated Interactive Program Guide, Video CD Player, File Player, CD Audio Player, a Media Library, and an optional future upgrade that will support Component output (also known as YPrPb) to connect the card to Digital TVs. Other ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV features include the RADEON 8500 GPU and 64MB DDR memory; a stereo TV-tuner with 125 channels; analog and digital video capture and editing; Gemstar-TV Guide's GUIDE Plus+ system to let you view and search TV listings by category, actor/performer, or date; Personal Video Recorder (PVR) capability; Teletext support in Europe; DVD video playback with Dolby AC-3 digital audio; and support for Microsoft's DirectX 8.1 specification. It also includes gobs of bundled software including Ulead VideoStudio 5, Valve 3D Video Games, and Matchware Mediator 6.