Do you watch Divx on your TV?

[markiz]

I have a divx movie which looks good on the monitor, but looks bad on the TV. When you watch divx movies on your tv, does the picture look good? Is it comparable to DVD or normal tv signal, or the monitor? Does the video card determine whether the picture is good quality or bad?

thanks for your comments

[xzquala]

when I have a divx that my wife wants to watch we usually watch it on the tv, and I have to say it looks great here.

I use a toshiba laptop play the vid on my tv. it has an S3 savage/IX m7 vid card in it with tv out. the tv it is going to is a daewoo.

I thought I would be disappointed with the appearance, but it looks really sharp to me. could be just that the tv is brand new.

I don't use the tv out of my voodoo 3 3500 because I don't like how that one looks at all.

edit:

to answer your questions, does the picture look good? Is it comparable to DVD or normal tv signal, or the monitor? Does the video card determine whether the picture is good quality or bad?
does it look good? very.
as good as the dvd? yes, videos were 640*xxx resolution, and looked much better than cable tv.
vid card make a difference? in my case it did. the voodoo3 sucked and the s3 rocked

[diji1]

Hi,

Maybe it is your graphics card ?? I have not had the problem but i have read there is an issue with matrox g400 ( and others ? ) with resizing unless you encoding using a hor. res that is divisible by 32, or u use a directshow filter that resizes differently ( i think ) - just an idea.

[bb]

Have an ATI card with TV out. There was a dark vertical bar in the picture when using the front AV connectors.

My TV set has two SCART sockets, one of them can be S-VHS enabled. So I connected the TV out of my graphics card with the S-VHS SCART through a SCART/S-VHS adapter. Works great, picture quality is awesome.

bb

[zeronegative]

I always watch my DivX movies on my TV. I have a GeForce2MX and use the TwinView TV-out to hook it up to a radiographic transmitter which sends the signal to my TV (which is on the other side of the house).

The movie quality is very good, considering it's a TV you're displaying on. In many cases (such as movies with bad deinterlacing or movies with many blocks) the TV image is even better because those artefacts won't be noticeable. The only drawback is that overscan is not supported, so you will have to learn to live with black borders around your movie.

When away at home I use a Trust Televiewer, hooked up to the VGA output of my laptop. The image quality coming from the Televiewer is close to excellent, and you have many options (including zoom, shift left/right/up/down and under/overscan). Also takes care of any black borders around the movie.

[qthesnake]

i use DivXPlus with my H+ card, and a S-Video cable to a 29" TV, and the picture rocks!

[Ripe73]

Originally posted by qthesnake
i use DivXPlus with my H+ card, and a S-Video cable to a 29" TV, and the picture rocks!

HI!
Can you view subtitles with DivXplus?

[UHT]

you can often fix overscan problems with tvtool, www.tvtool.de

[qthesnake]

to Ripe73:

well, if the sub's are burned in, then there is no problem, but if it's a diretshow filter or something, i still don't know how to do it...

let me know if you find a way....

[smiller667]

Originally posted by diji1
i have read there is an issue with matrox g400 ( and others ? ) with resizing unless you encoding using a hor. res that is divisible by 32, or u use a directshow filter that resizes differently.
The image quality of the Matrox stays fine - it just fails to zoom the video overlay onto the TV-out ... thus you get no overscan plus a lot of CPU power is wasted :(. The filter fixes that, true.

[sarahjh69]

I watch DiVX on my 32" widescreen tv all the time.
The quality is completely brilliant! (much better than on the pc monitor)
I use an ATI AIW Radeon or sometimes a Radeon 7000 (powered by)
using the composite output. Both cards give exactly the same quality
output. I am very satisfied with the result, If you had the DVD and
DiVX playing side by side you could tell the difference (but its not much), far more important to the picture quality is the original DVD transfer quality.

[Vladdy]

Unhappy with the chrontel 7007 chip in my leadtek geforce 2, i decided to buy a crt projector. Needless to say it plugs directly into my PC and as you can imagine.. only one word comes close... STUNNING.. course, the solution was rather expensive.. $6000 AUD..

[kvs]

So, any of you experiencing "ugly macroblocks and scretches in dark areas"? Check out the thread below..

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15994

Just wondering.

[BaronVlad]

I watch the movies on the TV and it has almost even better quality than on my computer monitor, where it is wonderful also !

i am using fairuse and gordianknot for backup and in my system there is a T-bird 1,4, 256 DDR and ATI Radeon 64 MB DDR running with a fast harddisk.

[kvs]

And you read the thread I posted the link to?
Seems to be problems with dark areas.. I personally
don't own a tv card, but am going to buy one in
the near future.

Also, not problems with all dark movies... have you
seen gladiator on your television?`

mmmm... what sort of tv out card and tv do you have?

[theReal]

I know from a friend (Radeon, SVHS connected to 100Hz tv) that even crappy divx movies are quite watchable on the tv. Good Divx's are perfect on the tv screen indeed.

As for me, I don't watch Divx on the tv, I watch tv on the monitor (21") ;)

[sarahjh69]

a friend told me they tried making DiVX movies
with 1-pass encoding and had the Macro blocks in black problem
switched to 2-pass encoding and the blocks went away!

I always do 2-pass encoding and have not seen this problem
so I can't really say if this is the answer or not.

PS. Radeon cards have the best TV out of any card around.
You don't have to spend a lot of money either. Display
colour and TV out quality are identical on my
AIW Radeon 32meg DDR ($200)
Radeon 7000 powered by 64meg DDR ($65)

[BaronVlad]

@thereal

oooo, I am sorry, but I didnt read the other post yesterday, it was too late for me, but it is right, i encoded braveheart with fairuse (something like Divx3)and had this Problem when fitting this long movie to 700 MB, with 1400 it was better, but sarahjh69 is right, with my radeon (64 MB DDR Vivo) on the TV the movies even look better than on the computerscreen. And because of that its ok.....

[Poy]

I have widescreen tv 32" with vga-in (640x480) and I use zoomplayer to zoom to zoom normal size (640x480 in widescreen! not in full screen movies) and i also use divxg400 filter to subtitles.

[Bad Joker]

we are using a matrox g400 with the divxg400 tool, it works fine, never seen a better image quality on tv out, and you don't have to play fullscreen in media player, the dvdmax tool from matrox just rocks and also plays vcd movies in average quality (for that source)

the only problem is the oversizing, but divxg400 also fixes that problem, just add black borders ;)

[macdaddy]

The three cards I have used are (in chronological order): tnt2ultra + tvtool; ati radeon 64ddr vivo; dxr3...

Hands down, the dxr3 has the best quality tvout. I am using a NTSC display, but I have read the same thing from people who use PAL sets. avi/ac3 look great using the card's tvout chip (via the hp render and directshow resize)...

I am hoping the new x-card will be even better ($100-price of the preorder-says it will be). The fact that MPEG-4 decoding is done by the hardware should eliminate any playback problems that the processor chokes on now. I only hope it ships on time...

[Emp3r0r]

the possibilities of this card will be interesting... I wonder if it will be able to do forward and reverse on divx like H+ did with DVD.

[_Vengeance_]

I don't even have a monitor anymore.... I'm typing this message on a 36' Proscan TV ($1200, 16000 hrs use in 2.5 yrs sofar, and it receives programming information via analog cable much like people who pay for digital cable get...GuidePlus).

ANYWAY...

Divx looks great! S-video connector + ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon = flawless output. Everything is readable.

I generally encode at a higher bitrate than the IRC bandwidth-brats because artifacts and such are much more obvious on the TV than on a monitor. 1500kbps CBR for 512x384 animated, 1900-ish kbps for 512x384 live. 1200kbps for VHS.

[Latexxx]

Originally posted by macdaddy

I am hoping the new x-card will be even better ($100-price of the preorder-says it will be). The fact that MPEG-4 decoding is done by the hardware should eliminate any playback problems that the processor chokes on now. I only hope it ships on time...

I don't know where you live, but here in Finland you can found it from shops.


Two simple questions:

1. Any hope to get anamorphic picture out from at aiw if source is normally cropped and resized?
2. Any ways to get rid of the black bars which surround the whole picture?

[_Vengeance_]

What's Anamorphic?

I don't have very borders when I do tv-out...
Or rather, I am so used to having very small borders that it doesn't bother me. I mean, it's a 36' TV ! Plenty big even if it's really only 35.5' of viewable area due to small black borders (Which I didn't really notice).

[MaXiMuS]

no i watch divx on my gateway destination 36 inch vga monitor max 800x600 @ 60 hz

:D

[Slogra]

No, tv-tool doesn't support geforce 4 cards yet... so i have borders

[Hanty]

Now, if only ASUS V7100 card wouldn't require a composite cable with a converter intead of a SVHS for displaying color on TVs then I'd be watchign my encodes there.

[Latexxx]

Originally posted by _Vengeance_
What's Anamorphic?


Movie films and dvd's are anamorphic. It means that widescreen picture is strectched horizontally to fit the normal image size. So both widescreen and non-widescreen movies has same resolution, but widescreen picture is wider wich means if you watch it with non-widescreen support tv, all the people look like they would really tall and thin.

[geniv]

got a RAdeon 7500 with SVideo Out to my 32" Toshiba and as far as I'm concern any movie reguardless of format, codect bitrate etc... looks WAY better in my TV than the monitor..

probably because:
- the color setting on my TV is better
- TV have a "natural" interpolation on the pictures smoothing it out.
- compression artifacts are less noticable on the TV.
- 32" is always better for movies :)

ohh yeah. the quality of the movie on TV depends on the quality of the Video card. so don't say the movie sucks on TV

cheers :)

[theReal]

There's one way to get close to the TV-look on a monitor. Take a 21" monitor, set it to 640x480 and use the new film-effect of Divx5 at half strength. Looks good!

[ppera2]

I had very good TV out with Voodoo 3 3500 card. Now I use ATI Radeon VIVO, it is also very good, however some little black bars at top and bottom can't be removed with resize - I use PAL system.

In same cases macroblocks are more visible on TV, but with newer codecs it is not case.

[Zhnujm]

the Radeon Tweaker can enable an overscan mode for most radeon cards. (if the overscan button is not already available in the ati driver)

http://www.rage3d.com/radeon/r3dtweak/

[cypher_soundz]

I have a Geforce2Mx 64mb with tv-out using composite through my video to my 28 inch tv. it looks very good , but there is a noticabel colour difference that cant be resolved , my thought is that my tv out is only 16 bit? i can notice alot more macroblocks on my tv but only on poor quality encodes ! all in all i can watch my movies on my tv so i'm happy! :D

[_Vengeance_]

Use a card with s-video tv out. The resolution will be much better, and the colors will be much much much much better.

This is very obvious if you have a card with svideo AND composite out, hook both up to your tv, and flip rapidly back and forth between the 2... the difference are astounding.

[cypher_soundz]

I actually do have both S-video and composite , but i can't get hte s-video to work , the guy in the shop were a brought it from said my tv(old 14 inch) /video wasnt compatable with S-video ? can this be true would my new tv work?

[_Vengeance_]

Compatible? Either your tv has an s-video input jack on it, or not.

There is no compatible/not compatible.

There is only have/not have.

If you can physically hook it up, and it doesn't work, then either the card is broken or there is some special thing (Like you have to hook the cable up while both are turned off, s-video can be temperamental sometimes.)

[cypher_soundz]

Hmm well it still wont work! i have an S-VHS cable ...is this the same as an S-video cable? i have no picture at all not even a black and white one!!! oh btw i am using a S-VHS to scart , i have heard some rumors that this doesnt convert the picture? WHY sell a cable that doesnt do its purpose??? LOL well i supose thats life! ;)

[theReal]

I think the S-VHS to Scart sends the information from S-VHS to special connectors on Scart - but those are not connected in a tv set or vcr that doesn't support S-VHS, so you'll get a b/w picture...

[QuoVadis]

Yep that's right, not all TVs/VCRs have separate connected pins for the luma & chroma signal, most of them just support composite signals. Btw. that has nothing to do with S-VHS. S-VHS is some kind of video tape standard! The type of connector you're talking of is called S-Video (as Vengeance said).

TVTool v6.5 beta is out and downloadable @ http://tvtool.info/tvtool65.zip

It now supports GeForce4MX graphic cards (i dunno if it works with 4Ti, so try it yourself)

[ppera2]

S-Video connection was first when S-VHS videos arrived. People often mix ot, but important in all is that we have separated line for luminance and chrominance signal.

[GodH8sMe]

Unless I'm at work I use the 25" Daewoo TV at my house.

GeForce2 MX 32MB. TBird1.333, 512MB PC2100, EPoX 8K7A (v1.1) mobo.

Slackware Linux 8.0, for a player I use xine (currently 0.9.10,
which seems to be much better behaved than 0.9.9, and as good
as 0.9.8).

Very low cpu overhead, picture looks great. Cleans up
some not-quite-perfect encodes. Great for anime too! Although the solid-color blockiness might stand out a bit more (sometimes, usually on poorly encoded downloads :) ).

Seemed to have a 'bleeding' (funky motion rainbow blur) problem with xine 0.9.9 (maybe any version?) and the older codec binaries... new codec binaries ones (and xine 0.9.10 maybe?) seem to have stopped that.

[theReal]

S-Video connection was first when S-VHS videos arrived.
Isn't it that S-VHS seperates luma/chroma on the tape, while VHS doesn't? And that's why a new type of connection was needed for S-VHS vcrs?
That's how I thought the story went, but most of it was just my personal imagination ;)

[Slogra]

Originally posted by Slogra
No, tv-tool doesn't support geforce 4 cards yet... so i have borders

Yep, i got my geforce 4 running on my widescreen now :). I also added 720x640 resolution so it's perfect for DVD and Divx now.

[Nic]

I have to use tvtool 6beta to get rid of the borders....But of course, it reverts back to normal after 10mins or if you quit.

(But not if you do a CreateProcess, set your tv up, then TerminateProcess ;) - sometimes its useful to be a coder)

-Nic

[Slogra]

The creator of tvtool is gonna do something about that little trick... i wonder how he's gonna do it.