Using a 43" TV for Display

[doomed@ripping]

Hi,
My question is for the people who use their TV as a secondary display for either games or movies. Currently my home theatre system cosists of a 43" Philips TV and a Pioneer DVD + Bose Sound System. I want to rig up my Computer to the TV and the Music System so that I may watch my DivX movies on it. The sound is no problem as I can hook it up to my Creative Sound Card but for display I will have to use TV-out from my pc by installing a separate card or getting an external TV-Tuner which supports TV-out. I used to have a Sis6326 AGP card which supported TV-out on my pc way back in 1998 but the display on the Tv wasn't anything to write home about.

Is investing in a TV-out a decent choice, are we able to get good quality? My Tv supports Composite, S-Video & Component Inputs but I guess this card would support S-Video & Composite Only. Do the AGP cards with TV-out give good quality. What I mean by quality is the absence of artefacts like noise of ghost-image on the display.

[sarahjh69]

The ATI radeon cards seem to have very good tv out
I am very happy with the way mine looks on a
32" Philips widescreen tv.
I have found the "Made by ATI" cards to have a much
better quality output than the "Powered by ATI"

The are not all that expensive.

The TV output on the Nvidia graphics cards is very
poor in comparison.

[doomed@ripping]

Thanks for the info sarahjh69,

I am new to this and so was curious to know more about this and maybe you as a senior member could help out a newbie :)

1. What sort of resolutions, refresh rates & color depths do you get on your TV from your graphics card? Not that it matters much in DivX movies but games might be a whole new story.

2. Is the 16:9 Aspect ratio on the TV maintained or is the picture stretched to fit the 16:9 ratio of the TV?

3. Is the picture geometry on the TV correct?(is it free from skewing or stretching @ the edges)

4. Can the TV-out source be used as a second display? or is it that what is displayed on the monitor is the same as TV-out.

5. The output to TV is Pal or NTSC? My TV would take both but just curious to know. Is the output switchable between Pal & NTSC from the PC?

6. How do you connect your PC to the TV(S-Video or Composite Video Cable)

7. How is the quality of NVidia inferior? Is it because of flicker, resolution or other issues?

Thanks

Anshu

[MBorg_PL]

Yo.

I've Hercules Radeon all in wonder 8500 TV and what is about TV out it is very good.
You have almost every option You can imagine, execially with some stuff from net. But even with standart programs - standart drivers and multimedia control you can do many things you want.
you can use TV as a second/ primery display. You can expand your desktop into both monitor and TV in every dimension, or you an clone the screen. My Radeon can display 1024 to 786 onto TV, but TV has to be able to operate it, if not it will just display a part of screen (as do my 29" panasonic TV). PAL and NTSC are both supported, and I can switch between them. The geometry is OK. As soon as it is normal windows desktop, the TV behaves like monitor. If the aspect ratio is other then it shows, you can see black belts at the top and down. But still you can see subtitles there or somethins - like on normal monitor. From my card you can use either S-Video or composite. There is a special box connected to the card, that has many exits and enteries.
The difference - well, I'm not sure about, cause I had only once an opportunity to deal with NVidia TV out. And it was pretty old one - geforce 2 mx 4 with TV out. And it was really poor. The options on diplaing picture ware only 2 ore someting like this (clone and stretching desktop in one dimension). The output picture quality was very bad - noisy and not sharp. And it worked only in windows, using windows drivers - you could not work for example with BIOS setup, becasue the TV out was inactive - in radeon you can work only with TV - even if you want just to instal new copy of windwos, or check some bios settings. But as I said it was an old card, so now something could be changed. Still I've not heard that it happend a big progress :)

MBorg_PL

[cult]

yeap,the quality on my 32" sony by ati8500 is great.I saw a geforce2mx something on my tv,it wasnt thaaat bad,but tvtool was used or else it is even worst.But the maximum was 800x600 (mine at 1024x768)as I can remember.I dont use any special program for the tvout.The geometry seems ok,and many people who have watch dvds and encoded movies have been suprised by the quality.I dont remember though that the guy with the geforce couldnt get into the bios only with the tvout...

[Solo]

I have a Radeon 9800 Pro which gives an amazing TV out picture for divx playback. You can connect the TV at the same time in a dual setup and I've found that cloning the picture to the TV a lot easier with the ATI drivers than the nvidia ones. The new 3.9 (and 3.8) Catalyst drivers also have an overlay feature which gives a nice output to the televsion without having to adjust too many settings. You can select your output in the drivers by just selecting your country and it will auto select pal/ntsc. You can also select which type of connection you are using ie svideo or composite. And when you start a movie it will automatically play full screen on the TV.
Your TV out is however restricted to 60Mhz but you can use flicker removal to help set it right. You woon't get a stand alone DVD player picture quality though.

[MBorg_PL]

But still one has to remamber that it is a big problem with ati drivers. The power of radeons is greater than nvidias cards, but the drivers are so bad, that I can not play many games - from alien vs predator to neverwinter nights. And it is not that my computer is too slow - just the problem is drivers. I use only oryginal ones so maybe I do not know about some third firm made sollutions, but in fact i do not have time to veryfie it. Abou this I'm very dissapointed.

[doomed@ripping]

Wow Thanks Guys! that was very helpful.

I think I am going to go the ATI way and buy an AGP card. Time to give my faithful and dear Voodoo3 some rest, its given me almost 4 years of gr8 service.

Unfortunately ATI cards are a rare sight here in this place that I live in India. Even an Optical Microsoft Mouse is hard to spot... I'm going to have to import the ATI. How much does a ATI retail for (US$)? And the AGP comes in different flavours 7000, 8500 etc. which one to go in for?

I checked out a couple of chinese made TV Tuner cards (PCI) which also seemed to offer TV-out. There wasn't much documentation but it did say VGA out on the card and had an S-Video & Composite out as well as RF, S-Video & Composite In. Couldn't try them though. Tomorrow will try to borrow one from the shop and try @ home on my PC. I think it's a sweet enough deal even if it's just a TV-tuner @ about $25-30(US). I guess res won't be as hot as a Graphics Card and picture quality will be poor but worth a shot.

What I want to do is take my old PC and make it into a standalone DivX player with my TV. I already have a DVD Player so will use an old Creative Infra CD-Rom Drive instead of DVD drive. The creative Infra will suit a dual purpose as it has a remote with it which will control functions. The Infra's remote only works with it's own software Player but the trick is to use the Num keys and remap them in BSplayer, that way 1 to 0 when pressed will perform the function as mapped on the keyboard Numpad. The downside is the Infra remote only supports ME & 98. But I guess for the purpose of displaying divX i don't need XP anyway. Processor is 700 PIII with 256mb Ram, will plug in an old 20gig samsung and my DivX player is ready to rock. Just waiting on the TV-out. Just buying an ATI for this old PC seems like overkill for my pocket so looking for cheaper options first. Then maybe I'll put the ATI on my new PC.

Ciao

Anshu

[MBorg_PL]

Well, what about price you centairly have to decide what you want. If you need only TV output you should look around model olny with TV out (neither Vivo nor all in wonder) because it is much cheaper. And the quality as far as I know is very good. In this case it is a big difference in power of models. If you wanna play games take at least radeon 9600 or higher - the price begins at about 150 $ and up, up and up :) Models 9000 till 9200 are economy versions, but still the quality of picture if very good, just the graphic accelerator is worse - good if you do not play, like for standalone DivX player price about 80 - 100 $. If you look good you could find a model even with remote control. The Vivo cards are with output and input, so you have concerne if you need this. It is higher in price about 50 $ from the same model output only. All in wonder cards are vivo plus TV tuner, plus remote control, and some other features, still you have to think of if you need it or not. The price starts from 200$. You could look for older models like radeon 8500 which is really great cost now a bit lower.
I wanted to make such divxplayer but you have to know tha - you will not be able to use this computer to other things - a little games, but read my last post about drivers. Forget about doing any work on TV. It is to blured. 2) it is noisy - the coolers are really noisy as well as DVD, and it will disturb a lot. 3) it will take a lot of place near TV, and add a lot of cables what will cainterly make sittuacion a bit difficult if you want to change anything there.
Because of this problem try to think about normal standalone DIVX players like Kiss or LiteOn. You will have DVD and divx player in one thing, no mentioned above problems, still good picture quality, but also have another problems instad :)
It is your choice :)