BEST tv-out solution

[praz]

Hello

I am looking for the best tv-out solution there is for my computer. Will mainly be used for divx/xvid out (many use q-pel and such things).

I have been looking some on the Hollywood cards, are these good for that? Which one should I buy? Or is it better buying a new radeon card?

[cult]

radeon

[communist]

I'm quite happ with my Radeon 7500 :)

[praz]

Originally posted by communist
I'm quite happ with my Radeon 7500 :)

Got a Radeon 7500 AIW at this comp atm. But it has a BIG problem. I get black borders on the top and the bottom of my 28" Philips WS tv. I am using compsite out (atm, will change to s-video in a couple of days). I have stretched the image as much as possible with the ATI Control panel, but still there are borders :(

[Dark-Cracker]

try to use TVTool it sometime permit to bypass limitation of the graphic card tvout driver for stretching the picture.

Bye.

[dvd_maniac]

The radeon cards seem to produce better text than the other cards of equal price, that is why I like them. I use my tv as my only monitor. and also for all multimedia purposes

[praz]

Originally posted by Dark-Cracker
try to use TVTool it sometime permit to bypass limitation of the graphic card tvout driver for stretching the picture.

Bye.

Um.. Does TVTool work for ATI cards?

[WorldBook]

AFAIK tv-tool is only for nvidia graphics card.
I am very satisfied with tv-out on my ati radeon mobility 9000.

[communist]

Originally posted by praz
Got a Radeon 7500 AIW at this comp atm. But it has a BIG problem. I get black borders on the top and the bottom of my 28" Philips WS tv. I am using compsite out (atm, will change to s-video in a couple of days). I have stretched the image as much as possible with the ATI Control panel, but still there are borders :(
Some boarders will remain - the reason why I didn try to remove / reduce them is that I had a GF2 before and that had very big boarders - with the Radeon its much smaller :)
I couldn get the stretching thingy to work properly - most times the whole image gets distorted here :|.

You may want to try increase / decrease resolution and look if it helps.

[sillKotscha]

AIW 7500 - FANTASTIC!!!

no black bars or whatever... I'm guessing you didn't adjusted your card to your tv properly... and as a plus... I've experienced that after ATI released cat3.4 the driver(s) will adjust tv-out automaticly. So, if you didn't updated by now... update to the latest driver suite-3.6 this drivers are really great!!!

cheers Sill

P.S.: res should be set to 1024x678 - nice ;)

[praz]

I have the very latest drivers, and there still are some small borders, as "communist" says.

I'll try the 1024x768 later, but I think it's to large for my tele..

[communist]

Yep updated to 3.6 too now. The boarders are the same. The stretch function doesnt do anything for me.
Its still the same > 1cm black boarder at the top and 1.5 cm at the bottom.

No matter how I set it up (monitor as primary or TV, different resoultions, cloning, extending desktop etc.) the size of the boarders doesnt change.

Using a Sony TV and composite out.

[precjednik]

Originally posted by communist
Yep updated to 3.6 too now. The boarders are the same. The stretch function doesnt do anything for me.
Its still the same > 1cm black boarder at the top and 1.5 cm at the bottom.

No matter how I set it up (monitor as primary or TV, different resoultions, cloning, extending desktop etc.) the size of the boarders doesnt change.

Using a Sony TV and composite out.

Same problem with my ATI RAGE Mobility. Can't get decent TV-out without those top&bottom black borders.
Is this only ATI problem? Recently I was change 3 NVidia and one Voodoo card without such kind of problem.

Some registry hack, anybody knows something?

[cult]

did you try rage3d tweak?It was some options that may solve the problem

[precjednik]

Originally posted by cult
did you try rage3d tweak?It was some options that may solve the problem

I'll try thx, and post the results later.

[Hectic]

i got a brand new ati all-in-wonder radeon 9000 pro for $130;) kicks ass on my a-bit nf7 w/nforce and athlon 2600 along with a usb psx dual shock converter and all the emulators in the world. need me a dvd-r drive though

[ppera2]

It was mentioned here that ATI Radeon has problem with black bars at top and bottom - at least it's so by PAL TV out. Nobody found solution - it's maybe problem in encoder chip.

Actually solution could be to adjust vertical size in TV, but it is only for TV mechanics :-)

[Solo]

I used to have a Nvidia Geforce4 MX440 (to 29" Television) and the picture was good, but I always believed it could be a lot better .... then I got a Radeon 9700 Pro ..... OUCH !!! ..... what a difference ..... now this is how TV out should look !!!!!
The same movies look about 50% better on the Radeon.

[cult]

Same happened to me.There is g a big difference with ati.I watched my encodes at 29" tv with my ati's tvout and it was like watching dvds.

[Zhnujm]

As cult already said, the rage3d tweaker can enable an overscan setting in the ati driver.
But dont except to much from it, the overscan area was much to large and off centered with my Radeon 8500. And you cannot adjust the size in this mode.

[ppera2]

Must tell something more about TV out: real good picture will get only via RGB or component (YUV) connection. Some Matrox card have RGB, and some ATI have component, but only NTSC models.

[precjednik]

Originally posted by cult
did you try rage3d tweak?It was some options that may solve the problem

Well, unfortunately rage3D tweak don't work, something like "unsuported chip", or something.
I am not suprised, my card is Rage Mobility, probably lucking in some 3D functions...

Googled a lot, yet no solution. Any other opinions are allways welcome!

Sucks ass :angry: :angry: :devil:

[MemeX]

I have the old Matrox Millennium 450 Dual-Head and that works great with my TV! I'm very satisfied, it also has a great desktop picture.

The only minus is that the animations etc. aren't very smooth in the taskbar, and only in the taskbar, which is very strange. they sort of flash, or blink repeatingly. I haven't experienced that problem running the gfx-card under win98, but win2k has showed that little bug. Linux worked great too, I'm not too sure about WinXP.

[brute]

The radeon has black bars, that's a fact, but if you set the resolution to 800x600 they're much smaller than in 1024x768!
Additional you can activate the overscan feature with a teaker, and that minimizes the bars, but by the way, what's the problm with 1cm tiny bars?...
Activate the Theatremode and the problem is done, then you won't notice the bars by viewing movies.


AFAIK the matrox G400 has the best tv-out ever. There was a comparision a half year ago and they compared a picture of the radeon with that one of the matrox, and the difference was amazing in details, the colors, the whole details, it was much sharper and clearer on the matrox. But I'm satisfied with my radeon's 8500 tv-out.


And i think you can do a lot more with the radeon-tv-out now.

[cult]

My radeon 8500 on a sony 32" tv looks just great.even the encoded movies look great

[brute]

i didn't say that the tv-out quality is bad, but if you compare it to the matrox one, it's much worser.

If you don't have both cards to compare you couldn't see any difference, but if you can compare them at the same time on two TV's, you're able to see what a real tv-out is.

[cult]

didnt say that radeon' tv out is better than matrox.I just said that I am very pleased with my radeon that shows great quality on a 32"tv with very very small black bars(if they are any)and I am able to play battlefield with the highest settings :)

[hammer42]

I've found that one of the best tools to use to make the picture on the tv the best is a program called powerstrip. It lets you customize every setting of the timings and such. You can change your video card to alot of different resolutions. You can get it here: http://www.entechtaiwan.com/ps.htm

[brute]

if you have an ATI card, you don't need such tools. And AFAIK powerstrip is a tool to overclock cards... I won't have options that the Catalyst driver hasn't.

[cult]

Umm yes.I installed it too and didnt see anything that could make the picture in my tv better.Everything and more is in rage3d and in the catalyst

[Boost]

When viewing YUV material (DivX, DVD etc) some colors (mostly skin color and skies) get bright purple. It's just YUV material and just on TV-out.

I'm using PAL output.

See http://fredrik.rambris.com/radeon/ for pictures.

Anyone seen this?