Recent Update (May 30, 2009): According to a poster below, these instructions work for Windows 7 also. Just keep in mind, these instructions will only work with 32-bit Vista or Windows 7.
Important Note for 64 bit users: This procedure WILL NOT work for Vista 64-bit because the drivers mentioned above are 32-bit. If I were guessing, there will be no 64-bit drivers produced for the device since it is about 4 years old, as of November 18, 2008.
I have an ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 for about two years and it has worked very well for me. I originally bought it for use with my 1.5Ghz Compaq Presario so I could watch TV or play my PS2 while on the road. I recently bought an HP Pavilion dv2210us with Windows Vista Home Premium. So far, I really like my purchase, but sadly, neither ATI nor Microsoft seem interested in supporting the TV Wonder USB 2.0 in Vista. I really wanted to test out Media Center, but what to do?
I wasn’t deterred because I have fooled ATI devices before by using drivers I wasn’t supposed to in order to enable features. Follow the steps below and you’ll be watching TV with your TV Wonder USB 2.0 in Vista in no time at all.
- Lou (see his post below) says that removing all the installed ATI software before starting this install process is the only way he could get the installation to work. So, your first step is to use Add/Remove programs to uninstall all existing ATI software. (Thanks Lou for the advice!)
- It’s best not to plug in the TV Wonder USB 2.0 until you have installed the software first. If you have done so, Vista won’t properly install anything. Unplug the device, go in to Device Manager (Windows Key + Pause, in case you don’t know how to get there), and delete all the unknown hardware.
- Go here, http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/tvwonderusb2-xp.html , and download the Windows XP drivers for the TV Wonder USB USB 2.0. At the time I’m writing this, the driver version is 5.01.6317. I doubt that’ll change because the drivers were last updated in March 2005.
- Then go here, http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/common/mmc9-16.html , and download only the Encoder Package (which right now is version 6.12). This lovely package contains a transcoder that links to Media Center. You can’t use and won’t need anything else on this page. (Note: The next steps involve actually installing what we just downloaded. Now, neither package has a unified installer that will work with Vista, however, if you simply run the installer as Administrator, you can unpack the files and run the installer for individual components you need to make this work. )
- Now, we’re going to run tvw-usb2-5-01-6317.exe, which is the first file you downloaded. (Remember, User Account Control will ask for administrator rights.) This will unpack the drivers to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\tvw-usb2-5-01-6317. At some point, the installer will start throwing errors and may even tell you to plug in the device. At this point, Ctrl + Alt + Delete, open Task Manager, and terminate the installer. All we needed are the unpacked files.
- Plug in the TV Wonder USB 2.0. Vista’s hardware installer should kick into action. Tell it to search in a specific location and point it to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\tvw-usb2-5-01-6317\WDM_XP . Vista will then install about six or seven devices that all have to do with the tuner. Good news: We’re almost there!
- Next, run the Encoder Package, 6-12_xcode_38463.exe which will again unpack the files, this time to: C:\ATI\SUPPORT\6-12_xcode_38463 . The installer will choke, just like a minute ago, and you might even have to kill it with Task Manager. As long as the files unpacked, that doesn’t matter anyway.
- Run the following setup files that were just unpacked:
- C:\ATI\SUPPORT\6-12_xcode_38463\ATIPCE\setup.exe
- C:\ATI\SUPPORT\6-12_xcode_38463\ATITrans\setup.exe
- C:\ATI\SUPPORT\6-12_xcode_38463\AVIVO\setup.exe
- Reboot! (Thanks, Keith, for pointing out this omission.)
At this point, you have all neccessary encoders, decoders, and Media Center hooks to enable your TV Wonder USB 2.0 to talk to Vista’s Media Center with no problem.
When you actually open Media Center for the first time after doing all this, you’ll have to setup the tuner there, but it’s basically a channel search and choosing which input to use. Happy TV surfing.
Proposed Solution to “IR Hardware not detected” error
Poster Zeffrey Rodrigues shared the following exciting piece of information that may help anyone getting the error message “IR Hardware Not Detected.” Thanks Zeffrey!
The solution to ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 worked perfectly. However, ran into a problem with the Media Center TV tune up. The message was “IR Hardware not detected”. The solution for this is posted on the following website”
http://forums.techarena.in/mediacenter/63056.htm
Thought you may want to add to your solution list just in case someone runs into the same problem.
The Answer
Go back in to Windows Media Center setup
Select: Tasks -> Settings -> TV -> Setup TV Signal
Answer YES to popup questions – are you sure??
Continue normally through TV Signal Setup UNTIL:
Select -> I WILL MANUALLY CONFIGURE MY TV SIGNAL
Select -> ANTENNA – I dont care what you are plugged in to
Select -> ANALOG-ONLY ANTENNA – I dont care what you are plugged in to
Select -> RETURN TO TV SETTINGS – unless you really want Guide Listings
Select -> FINISH
SORRY – You have now by-passed the IR control device. you have to use a cable input and not a S-Video or composite input
But IT WORKS
Cheers from the Cisco Production Support Team
Anyone else seeing audio slowness issues? The audio and video are out of sync.
My installation hiccups once in awhile, but the audio and video are in sync. If I were guessing, I would say this sync issue is probably an issue with your USB controller chipset or its drivers. How many other USB devices do you have connected? If you record some video, is the recording out of sync also?
I followed the instrucitons and hte drivers are installed and Vista reports they’re working fine, but WMC doesn’t think there’s a TV tuner installed. Any ideas why yours works and mine doesn’t?
I’m running Windows Vista Ultimate, and am using a TV Wonder USB 2.0.
It did work after I rebooted. I have noticed some flickering and noisy audio (clicks) which seem to happen during some system activity.
Hey Thanks for this information, im from Honduras, i was sad because my tv tuner didnt work with VISTA until i found this! now it does work!! Thanks!
It worked for me, but after about 2 minutes, I get an error that the signal was lost …. any ideas?
So close to having this up and running…bottom line, it works with Media Center on Vista Home Premium, but the image has horizontal interference lines coming in and out of image and hear clicking noises in the audio. Any suggestions?
is there anyway to do this for a TV Wonder VE card. I tried following the directions, but i can’t get the setup files to unpack for the Wonder VE driver files.
Unpack the drivers in WIndows XP and put them on a USB drive. Then, when Vista asks for the drivers, point it to the drivers on the USB drive.
Before I found this, I tried to install my USB Wonder 2.0 stuff on vista, so i had it plugged in, and my cd that came with it plugged in. Now that I try to install it this way that you explain, where you say Tell it to search in a specific location and point it to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\tvw-usb2-5-01-6317\WDM_XP, i can’t do that for some reason but it already finds the old drivers or something. How do I delete the old stuff from when I messed up so it won’t find the files?
If it hasn’t been too long since you tried this, you can do a System Restore back to the moment before you tried to install the old TV Wonder USB 2.0 drivers. Does Vista not attempt to find the newer drivers even after you point to the directory they were extracted to? Keep in mind the directory you extracted to may not be exactly like mine, especially if ATI (er…AMD) has updated something!
It works fine, but every so often I have to reinstall everything as V-MCE does not see my tuner card anymore. Any ideas?
Doesn’t work at all with Home Premium 64 bit edition :-(
Great, using your guide I’m successfully using the tuner underVista Media Center
My problem is that I want to move it to an XP Media Center and I’m not sure if this is possible. Has someone successfully done this?
Thanks,
Dragos
I went against my better judgement and did a dirty install of vista home premium over xp media center 05. Needless to say, i had problem after problem with many things, including not being able to use my tv wonder usb. i found this article and tried, and was still unsucessful in my efforts. I gave in and did a clean install of vista with little system tweaking before I tried this suggestion again. After a long road, it finally works….no thanks to microsoft or ati. Thanks Jerry Travis.
Running Vista Ultimate, followed instructions correctly and even rebooted, but when choosing on the list, i can hear and see the video in the small screen, but next of that it doesnt see the device
worked great thank you
Ok i followed the steps and it works great… the only think is i am using it on my laptop so i occasionally remove the tuner usb cable to move my laptop and when i plug it back in it media center cant find it…………. i have reboot the computer with the tuner plugged in to get it to work is there any thing that can fix that?????????? also i couldnt find a way to get the signal for my ps2 from the composite inputs on media center but it works on hp quickplay i dont know why it doesnt on media center………..
so basically….. the tuner works fine but i have to alternate between quickplay and media center using media center after a reboot and quickplay if i unplugged the tuner once, i want it to work on both because i prefer media center for tv, but i have to use quickplay for games and i dont want to have to restart my laptop for tv
I realize this has been up for a little while now, but has any received errors installing the ATITrans setup? Specifically the ATIMCEConv.dll, Dirlist.dll, and mcelang.dll failed to register during the setup. I’ve tried a few things but no luck.
I don’t have media center —- I have Vista Business edition. Is there a solution to setup a tuner with that?
Sorry, but Vista Business lacks the necessary hooks needed to take advantage of the hack. I’m pretty sure there’s probably a really big, awesome (and probably illegal) hack to enable Aero and Media Center in Vista Business, but that’s far beyond my knowledge :)
I just tried these steps with my TV WONDER PRO PCI card and Vista Media Center refuses to recognize the card. The card is working through Nero (TV, Composite, etc). Any ideas on getting the TV WONDER PRO PCI version working?
Hey, J! I have a TV Wonder Pro PCI, but I don’t have Vista on that machine. I’m pretty sure the process will work, but you probably have to get the PCI Wonder Pro drivers. Sorry I can’t help.
Yeah, ATi doesn’t have Vista drivers for the TV Wonder Pro PCI. I installed XP drivers, and was able to view the TV through Nero. ATi’s MMC doesn’t work. Vista Media Center does not recognize the card (I followed all the instructions for the Encoder package including the rebooting of the computer).
Sigh, if I have to buy another card to run in Vista, what’s a good choice that will run in Windows Media Center?
Oh, and I already tried DScaler. It views TV just fine but does not record very well.
Thanks for this information. After three tries I’ve got my ATI TV Wonder USB running in Vista WMC.
Those who are having problems, my experience was I needed to make sure ALL ATI software that was still on my system after upading to Vista was removed. This was a two step process for me. First from control panel Add/Remove programs uninstall everything belonging to ATI (sort list by publihser). At one time there was an ATI uninstall utility that will uninstall all remaining ATI software and drivers, I still had it and ran and ran it to make sure nothing was left..
Once I was sure I had all ATI software and Drivers removed, in Device Manager under SOund Video and Game controllers I uninstalled any ATI TV Wonder device listed making sure if the dialog offered an option to DELETE DRIVER I checked the box.
After re-booting I then followed Jerry’s process and it worked flawlessly.
The video is a bit jumpy at first, but it seems to catch up eventually.
Thanks again Jerry
Thank you so much Jerry, I can’t believe this worked! I was this close to either downgrading to XP or shelling out $100 for new tuner.
Works great, but i can only get the coaxe input to work, how do i get the composte and s-video inputs to work.
I get to step 6, and point it to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\tvw-usb2-5-01-6317\WDM_XP… but then it cant find the drivers that are supposed to be there… please help
oxineo@gmail.com
No go for me. :(
It works! Although I was worried after the first boot when Windows installed a series of drivers, it has started working beautifully after the second boot when the installation is completed. I cannot believe even recording works because a software-encoding TV tuner like TV Wonder USB2 is not officially supported in the Media Center. Thank you very much.
Well, at the end of the successful night, I plugged TV Wonder USB2 out. Next morning, I plugged it in again, and Windows tried to install drivers again. It failed to install drivers this time and even crashed Windows severely, so I had to use System Restore to run Windows again. I guess I won’t try it again…but that was one happy night with TV Wonder USB2 on Media Center!
What driver names am I to look for in Vista Home Premium? What two device manager iconic devices ( Imaging device and Sound , video, and game controllers am I to utilize? In XP there were 2 : Imaging device & sound, video & game controllers and both were named ATI TV Wonder USB Edition (NTSC+). What 2 drivers should be used be and their name when using Vista Home Premium? WMC does not detect my ATI TV wonder USB Edition (NTSC+). It was giving me video using the drivers from my Cd rom, My computer could only find the sound, video & game controller using the drivers from your link and the other would be an unknown device. WMC could not detect a tuner, however Quickplay 3.0 gave me images with no audio.. I upgraded to 3.6 and now I have neither.
So I do not install a TV tuner but an imaging device to use WMC ?
jmendozajr@gmail.com
Many thanks …………I need some sleep!!!
I bravely tried the above method again and it is working fine again. In my case, Vista tried to reinstall the drivers after I unplugged it and plugged it back. Unaware of this, I unplugged it again in the middle of re-installation and that’s when all the trouble started. My advice: after successful installation, note carefully if Vista reinstalls drivers and be patient while it does so.
Are you using an ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0? If you’re using the ATI TV Wonder 1.0, I don’t think this hack will work. Also, DO NOT open QuickPlay with the tuner plugged in. For some reason, QuickPlay resets something in the driver and then you have to do a total reinstall of all the drivers before Media Center will work correctly.
when im at step 6 and the windows hardware installer is supposed to pop up.. the only thing that pops up is a message about the device is not recognized and has malfunctioned so i cant point it to anything.. any help?? is there something i have to change to enable to do a custom install of my hardware? please help!!
HEY I GOT THE TV WONDER USB 2.0 FOR MY BEST FRIEND BECAUSE I WAS TIRED OF HEARING COMPLAIN CUZ I HAVE A TIVO AND I HAVE MACS SO I HAVE EYETV ON 3 OF THEM…
AND I HAVE THE TV WONDER USB 2.0 AND I LOVE IT…IT WORKS AMAZINGLY ON MY MACBOOK AND WHEN I SAW THAT IT WAS COMPATIBLE WITH PC I GOT ONE OFF EBAY FOR HIM…AND IT CAME WITH THE SOFTWARE ETC…WELL IT DOESNT WORK RIGHT ON HIS NEW DELL NOTEBOOK CUZ HE HAS VISTA…
YOU CAN SEE THE TV BUT THERE IS NO SOUND AT ALL…SO I ASKED ATI FOR SUPPORT…FIRST OF ALL THEY SENT ME THIS GENERIC EMAIL ABOUT SOUND PREFERENCES ETC…AND I REPLIED TO IT AND GOT NO ANSWER…SO I WENT TO THE SITE AND SENT ANOTHER SUPPORT REQUEST UNDER THE SAME SUPPORT TICKET…AND THIS GUY SENDS ME AN EMAIL SAYING THAT THE TV WONDER USB 2.0 WAS DISCONTINUED AND THAT SOME OTHER PRODUCT THAT THEY ARE SELLING NOW IS COMPATIBLE WITH VISTA AND THAT THE USB 2.0 IS ONLY COMPATIBLE WITH XP OR LOWER…WHICH REALLY PEEVED ME OFF…
SO I THEN DO A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR VISTA AND TV WONDER USB 2.0 AND I FIND THIS PAGE…AND IT SOUNDS GREAT…OH YES I WILL BE ABLE TO HELP MY BEST FRIEND OUT WITH THIS PROBLEM…BUT NO
SINCE HE HAS VISTA HOME BASIC HE DOESNT HAVE WINDOWS MEDIA CENTER AND NOW I AM BACK AT SQUARE ONE…SO IF I COULD GET SOME HELP WITH THIS FROM ONE OF YOU GREAT, SMART AND CUNNING VISTA HACKERS IT WOULD BE GREAT…THIS IS WHY I AM A MAC MAN…I CANT DEAL WITH USING A PC…AND FOR ME VISTA IS A MESS…LOL
HOPE I DIDNT OFFEND ANY OF YOU BUT THIS IS WHAT I CHOOSE AND I AM HAPPY WITH IT…BUT MY FRIEND WHO IS SO FAR FROM BEING COMPUTER LITERATE COULD USE YOUR EXPERTISE…
PLEASE HELP ME OR POINT ME IN THE DIRECTION OF WHERE I CAN GET THE HELP I SO NEED…THANK YOU SO MUCH
NOW4REAL954@AOL.COM
ALEX
Hi Jerry, Thanks for this very useful article. I followed all the steps above and got everything installed in what I thought was the right manner. When I plug in the TV Wonder I see it in the device manager just as I would with XP. However, Windows Media Center does not allow me to set it up saying that it did not detect a TV tuner. Any idea what is going on here?
Thanks,
Sam
hey i tried the above steps and it was a no-go for me…any ideas or tweaks that can get around this….maybe its because i have ultimate 64 bit? I realllllyyyyyy want this capture device to record some ps3!
email me with some answers thanks svanrossem.student@manhattan.edu
Your procedure works great. Thanks for the support. By the way would be interested to know if ther is a way to 15switch to the rca inputs. Thanks again.
I followed the instructions last weekend and now have my TV Wonder USB 2.0 working in Media Center on Vista Ultimate. The TV capture and replay works great. However watching TV in Media Center is not as crisp and in the ATI Multimedia Center especially the color. I have had no issues so far, no lockups. The only thing I dont see in the Media Center menu is a channel browse.
I will continue to tweak the configuration.
Thanks for your help.
Just to inform u this instructions are valid to windows 7 !!! XD
I too was unable to use this process. However i did call up ATI and heres the solution that they gave me. The drivers here http://visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/7.10_600usb_vista.html fixed my problems and had my tuner up and operational in less than 5 minutes…. hope this helps those who were unable to use the above walkthrough.
Hi, I have a ATi tv wonder pro pci card. I have windows xp sp3. My card is working only once then I have to restart and do the same process to get it to work multiple times. Do you know of any fix for this? Also is it possible to get the tv wonder pro to work in xp media center 2005 the actual media center
I’m trying this but I’m also getting the IR Hardware not detected. But all I have is S-Video and Composite… Is there any way around it other than the one mentioned?
Hi Jerry, I dont have Windows Media Center, how can I install it???
My PC is vista home basic
Best Regards
Sorry, but to the best of my knowledge, you have to have Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate to get Media Center.
i tried everything, but it keeps saying that i have an unknown device or it recognizes the drive but won’t let it work (code 10)
… 32-bit and 64-bit processors (and the 4 GB Limitation). WHY? WHY? WHY? :)
I’ve confirmed that this doesn’t work for 64-bit processors. :) (I somehow missed your first few lines saying it works only for 32-bit)
Seems like any device driver for 32bit whille not work with 64bit
Has anyone else tried this on their Windows 7 setup? 7 doesn’t seem to allow the drivers to install.