The ATI Product Matrix lists the TV Wonder 650 Combo USB, TV Wonder 650 Combo PCIe and the TV Wonder 650 (Hybrid) PCI as being QAM capable but stipulates the latest Version of CMC and Vista as being necessary:
ATI TV Wonder™ Series Comparison Chart
Mind you, there has been, as far as I know, no distinction made between the originally released TV Wonder 650 PCI (Hybrid) and any currently shipping TV Wonder 650 PCI (Hybrid) card. Also note that the original TV Wonder 650 PCI (Hybride) made no mention of QAM support whatsoever,….
So as far as I am concerned this constitutes a paradox or an outright mistake in the ATI Product Matrix claim of QAM support for the TV Wonder 650 PCI (Hybrid). That is to say that I’ll error on the side of caution and thus question the claimed prowess and feature set of the TV Wonder 650 PCI (Hybrid) with respect to QAM.
For what its worth I have found QAM support to be invaluable!!! I have basically been using dual AverMedia AverTV Combo PCIe (M780) cards and an HDHomeRun in two different systems for this. One is a MCE 2K5 system and the other is a Vista Home Premium system (Vista Media Center). I receive approximately ~140 in the clear QAM channels that closely mirror my standard cable lineup. I also receive some addition HD channels I didn’t expect such as the “National Geographic Channel HD”, “TBS HD” “SNY HD” and more besides the local affiliates in HD,….. All via digital cable Clear QAM with channel mapping in MCE / VMC.
Its really great and much more reliable then OTA ATSC!!!
Unfortunately the HDHomeRun is limited to only mapping up to 68 channels so on the HDHomeRun system I had to cull some digital channels. The AverTV Combo PCIe (M780) doesn't have such a limitation so it can tune the full ~140 channels and map them.