If a hardware product isn't working because of a problem with the bundled software, whose problem is it? One reader discovered that if he wanted his ATI card to actually work, it was all on him.
"I've just purchased an ATI TV Wonder Elite," the reader wrote of ATI's product that displays TV video on a PC. "The software provided by ATI -- Cyberlink PowerCinema 3.0 -- hangs on attempting to run the program for the first time. The Cyberlink software is the TV and FM tuner/recording/scheduling software, so the card is useless without it or an equivalent such as Snapstream that costs $60."
As that's almost half of what he paid for the ATI TV Wonder Elite in the first place, he was hoping he could get ATI to help him get it running. "ATI says that it's not their software and advised me to contact Cyberlink," the reader wrote. "I did so via Cyberlink's tech support web form, but I have received no reply. I contacted ATI again and they advised me to contact Cyberlink by phone. When I told them of the $29.99 charge that Cyberlink has for voice support and asked if they had another phone number for Cyberlink, I was told that no one at ATI had such information and that it was not really their problem."
But shouldn't it be ATI's problem? After all, the software was part of the product he paid ATI for, so it certainly seems unfair that he should have to either pay Cyberlink for support or buy another program.
The reader did eventually get a generic reply from Cyberlink, but it only suggested he do things he had already tried without result. "The sad thing is that I've used ATI's previous software, ATI Multimedia Center, and it was stable and relatively easy to use. Too bad they didn't do their own software for this product."
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