Hello,
I am new to all things HDTV, and have a question for those users who own the ATI HDTV Wonder. I am interested in buying one, but do not want to commit if I dont have a chance of receiving a signal.
I live on the fourth floor of a building, and my window faces east. As i do not have a direct line of sight to the CN Tower (which is less than 3km south of me), will this affect the signal?
I understand the antenna is an indoor one, and hope that there are reflected signals that may work?

Thank you for any help,
Oleman

Being so close to the tower, you probably won't have any issue and will be able to pull the stuff off of the tower rather easily...

Just make sure you have all of the proper system requirements for your computer...

I have an Intel CPU, (2.8ghz), and an ATI AIW 9800 PRO, so I think the sys-reqs are as recommended.

THank you for your help. I did have trouble pulling in analogue signal with a cheapo radio-shack circle? antenna though. Ive read that the HDTV signal should be more resilient. hopefully...

I will probably try it even though I will have to pay a 25% restocking fee to return it at a store in Toronto if it fails :(

Where are you buying the ATI HDTV Wonder in Toronto? I didn't know anyone had it in stock...

I bought my HDTV Wonder at [Link: pccanada.com] . They're on Lakeshore, but will ship by mail.

Oleman, if you face east, you should still pick up City, Toronto 1 and CFTO. You should pick up the Buffalo networks as well. You may need an amplified antenna. If you have a clear line of sight to the east, you might pick up Rochester.

ATI advertises the antenna as indoor, but mine has been tied to my balcony since February without any problems.

Sory for the late reply alebowgm. I just bought the ATI HDTV Wonder from www.otapc.com. They are located in downtown Toronto.

My success so far with this card has been mixed. The setup went smoothly, but I am not receiving a good signal. I can only receive 1 channel (CBC), and the power is ~80% for this channel. I have had Sun TV and CTV HD barely for a few seconds, but CBC is the only consistent one I can receive. I even bought a 10db signal amplifier (as advised by someone on this forum), and it made no difference. I have the antenna on my window sill.

Is there anything else I can try? I thought that all signals were from CN Tower and am confused as to why I receive CBC at full strength but none of the others.

Any help is appreciated.

I've had mine since the beginning of the year and I've been quite pleased. I live by Lake Ontario and face the lake so I've been fortunate (near the Credit River in Mississauga).

My latest addition is a Samsung Axession amplified antenna, it's similar to the included yagi antenna but with a nice sturdy base, the ability to raise and lower the mast (by just enough to fix interference) and rotate it, and best of all it's amplified. It's about 60 bucks, let me know if you have trouble finding it, it's well worth the money (but it should stay indoors).

FOX 29 @ 90 percent
NBC just boosted the signal, 60+ percent
CBS is usually watchable 50 - 70 percent
CBC HD has a strong signal
CFTO needs to be manually entered (40-1) but is strong
CITY is directional and thus a bit tricky but usually 50+ percent

There's more... but that's a good start. The anomoly of the week has got to be WXXI, the PBS station in Rochester, coming in strong at 60+ percent but I am guessing it's being rebroadcast from Buffalo as the Buffalo PBS station seems to be gone from the airwaves at the moment.

Anything over 50 percent is generally more than tolerable. Quite a miracle considering the ghosting, snow, etc. that we used to put up with !

Of course one of the best channel guides is on this here site:
[Link: remotecentral.com]

Hi Lex. Where did you buy that Samsung Axession antenna? Is there a retail store in Toronto that sells it?

Shop is called RTC Electronics, 1350 Matheson Blvd. E #10A in Mississauga. South off the 401 on Dixie, just a bit west on Matheson, on north side in a strip mall. It's a shop that does a lot of free-to-air international satellite business but I've found them to be great for all sorts of things like soldering tools, cables, rechargable batteries, cell accessories, etc. In fact most of that strip mall is good for such things.

You might want to call them to make sure they have some left, 905-624-9986.

Thanks. I've been to that cluster of electronics shops.

You're right, they have a lot of useful electronics items. I didn't know they also carried antennas. I guess I was distracted by all the satellite dishes they had on the floor. IIRC, some of them were pretty big.