The Tuner

The TV-tuner on the 9600XT AIW is still an analog one, since digital TV is still not the standard on the market. The TV-tuner is capable of tuning into 125 channels of couch potato goodness, in stereo where applicable, of course. The card only supports the NTSC standard, since they are destined for North American, Latin American and Japanese markets. For those with digital cable or satellite, you will have to set the channel to 3 or 4 and use your decoder remote to change the channels.

This is the second AIW card to incorporate an FM-tuner. The FM-tuner on the card has a frequency range of 75.9MHz to 108.0MHz complete with the FM antenna as opposed to the 9600 Pro AIW. With FM-On-Demand capability, you can time shift radio shows to pause them or record them on WAV or MP3 format, have up to 10 preset radio stations, set station identifiers. You can even set it to wake you up in the morning.

Here are some details that I was able to find about the tuner on the Philips website.

  • Multistandard and FM stereo radio broadcast
  • Single 5 V power supply
  • Internally generated 30V tuning voltage supply
  • Full frequency range from channel 2 to channel 69
  • FM band coverage
  • PLL controlled tuning
  • Programmable PLL step size (31.25, 50 or 62.5 kHz)
  • Internal broadband AGC control for good signal handling
  • Supports auto-search tuning for FM radio (patent pending)
  • True-synchronous vision IF demodulator (PLL)
  • High performance Quasi Split Sound (QSS)
  • Ultra linear FM PLL demodulator for FM broadcast
  • Demodulated video output, AF sound output, and IF sound output
  • FM Radio Stereo Decoder integrated (L and R channels output)
  • I2C-bus control of tuning, address selection, AFC status information
  • Complies with FCC, JIS, CE, BETS-7 (Canada), CISPR
  • Small horizontally mounted metal housing

The Software

The software bundled with this version of the AIW is the same as those packaged with its predecessors. One thing that would have been nice to see with this video card is the Half Life 2 voucher that used to come with R350 video cards. I’m not too sure if any video cards built by ATi still come with the vouchers.

The card also comes with version 4.1 of the Catalyst drivers, and as always, a newer version is already out. Recently Catalyst version 4.6 was released and the Windows XP version can be gotten here.

As well the MultiMedia Center suite that allows you to access the other features of the card has been updated. Version 9.0 is available now on the ATI website as opposed to the 8.8 that is on the installation CD.

There is also the full version of Matchware Mediator 7 ®. This piece of software alone is worth $399 USD, which makes this video card so much more worth while. Matchware Mediator 7 will allow you to use an icon based interface to create Flash® animations, do HTML stuff and create interatctive CD's like a pro.

The Remote Wonder II

The ATI AIW 9600XT would not be complete without the Remote Wonder II. This device allows you to control your computer as well as its multimedia functions from as far away as 60 feet. You can use the Remote Wonder II as a mouse for simple web browsing or navigating through your desktop, or as a remote control to handle all your multimedia needs. AUX buttons are mappable to handle your needs. Drivers for this are also updated from version [blah] to version 2.3.0.1. Again the new version can be downloaded from the ATI website.

The Dongle

This is a pretty odd looking dongle if you ask me. However, looks can be decieving as this dongle provides a multitude of connections from your computer, including 2 VGA outputs, one S-Video Out, one Composite Out, a Stereo Line Out and finally a Digtal Audio Out.