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| TV-Out |
| racketboy - Oct 16, 2002 |
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dnguyen800 | Oct 16, 2002 | |
| here is a short article about the tv-out chips on most geforce cards: http://tvtool.info/english/tvchips_e.htm... the features you were talking about vary from card to card. My old ATI Rage II can handle tv and monitor displays at the same time, but my Kyro II and Geforce2 GTS can only display one at a time. Also, the resolution of the monitor and the tv have to be the same, so it's safe to use 800x600 for old cards like mine, and maybe 1024x768 on geforce4 tis and radeon 8500 and above. I wouldn't recommend using tv-out to replace your monitor, text is very hard to read and hurts your eyes, plus you can only use low resolutions. My MSI Geforce2 GTS TV-Out (Conexant Bt869 chip) has really bad image quality, so don't get that. My Apollo Kyro II tv-out output looks really great, GBA games look as good as SNES games on this. Divx videos look great, but the only problem with tv-out is that it doesn't use all of the tv screen, so there is a small border on the sides. For games, I was able to play games like Medal of Honor, Hitman, Sum of All Fears, Colin McRae 2, and Max Payne without any problems. I think your best bet is to get a card that is built by ATi. If they are anything like my RageII, you can expect the best features. You should read more reviews about videocards, sometimes they have information about the tv-out quality. | |||
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mtxblau | Oct 16, 2002 | |
| I'll vouch for that. I have a Radeon 7200 (64MB DDR ViVo) and while it won't compare to the new GeForces, it has excellent TV-Out (pretty solid resolution, text isn't too hard to read) and outstanding DVD hardware decoding (a bonus, I guess). The Radeon 8500 'All In Wonder' is pretty sweet. If you can afford it, I recommend it. Good drivers are at www.rage3d.com... . | |||
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Gallstaff | Oct 16, 2002 | |
| Yes i too have been wondering about this. is there any card that allows tv-in and tv-out? Not at the same time necesarily no but just one that offered both features? Cause i think that there are just sepearte pci boards you can get for this sort of thing. ATI... has these things. | |||
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racketboy | Oct 16, 2002 | |
| I'll probably get a GeForce 3 or 4 (do the MX series work good for TV-Out). The box I'll put it in will pretty much be for gaming (primarily gaming -- esp emus.) and being my "workhorse" (doing CD Burning, MP3 Ripping, etc.) to free up my laptop. I'm really looking forward to running MAME on there and using Gens so I don't have to have my Genny/32X/SCD all hooked up and clogging the back of my entertainment center with wires and "brick" AC plugs. Thanks you guys -- you we a big help. Any additional info would be appreciated. | |||
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Zziggy00 | Oct 16, 2002 | |
| Do not get a scan converter (a little box that hooks into your monitor ouput connector and then goes into the antenna plug on your TV) cheapest one's run for about 100 bucks and they really are poorly made (on the low end that is). One of my worst purchases i've ever made, I might have used it twice ever. | |||
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racketboy | Oct 16, 2002 | ||
yeah I've heard of those. for $100 you might as well get a new video card! sorry about your experiece, Ziggy | ||||
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mtxblau | Oct 16, 2002 | ||
Yeah, that's my card (vivo). Currently my PC is my entertainment center (DVD, TV, w/ my saturn, and VCR connected on the TV-In). I love it. It's not as sharp as a regular TV, but it's pretty good, I think. | ||||
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racketboy | Oct 16, 2002 | ||
Yeah, that's my card (vivo). Currently my PC is my entertainment center (DVD, TV, w/ my saturn, and VCR connected on the TV-In). I love it. It's not as sharp as a regular TV, but it's pretty good, I think.[/b][/quote] hmm that's interesting -- how are your experiences with the VCR hooked up like that? Do you do anything out of the ordinary? BTW, how do you hook up the audio from the sound card to a receiver? How is the quality? | ||||
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dnguyen800 | Oct 16, 2002 | |
| About GF4MX cards: "Usually the TV-chip is a single independent chip on the graphics card from a third party manufacturer like Conexant. These are supported by the tool. But with the GF4-MX nVidia introduces an own TV-chip NV17 which is integrated in the VGA chip and which is probably cheaper and less powerful than the external chips." If you really don't want to spend that much money on a videocard, a Geforce4 MX should be fine, here is a gf4mx 420 for only $44.50, read the reviews first before you buy it. http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MX420-... I have a computer that is similar to what you are planning to build, it plays all kinds of emulators and old games at full speed. Don't expect to play something like Doom 3 on it, unless you want to get a cheap Radeon 9000. | |||
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SilentSnipeR | Oct 16, 2002 | |
I have a radeon 8500 and that has excellet TV-Out. It's fun to hook up the PC to the TV and play Mafia. That game rocks  | |||
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racketboy | Oct 16, 2002 | ||
I'm not much of a bigtime PC games -- mostly console and arcade. I'll play an occasional sports game and some FPSs, but I'm more for some of the older ones like Half-Life and Unreal Tourney. Then there's other games like Monkey Island that shouldn't require much. Well, at the moment I'm looking at getting a Dell (money is tight) and my main two choices are a MX or a TI. The TI is about $70 more. | ||||
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dnguyen800 | Oct 16, 2002 | |
| if you're willing to spend $15 more, you can get this: Sapphire RADEON 9000 ATLANTIS http://www.allstarshop.com/shop....=pwatch... allstarshop has a 9/10 rating on resellerratings.com, and I think this definitely beats a GF4 MX, since it has DirectX 8.1 support so you can at least play Doom3 on it. This is made by a third-party, not ATi, so read reviews on it first. | |||
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mtxblau | Oct 16, 2002 | ||
My experiences have been nothing but positive. I switched from a different setup (regular TV, vcr, etc) to this and not only saved space, but I prefer it. The video card also has the closed captioning. The connection goes Saturn -> VCR -> Video card. Mind you, the VCR is a top of the line set I got when I photo studio closed it's doors, so the picture is insanely sharp (for a VCR). The video card is just a video in, obviously, so I change channels with said VCR. I input sound through the Line-in on my sound card (Aureal Vortex2) and have outputs to a stereo and computer speakers (it's a 4.1 card). Out of the ordinary... I rarely run it full screen - one the coolest features of the card is when you minimize the screen, the video becomes your wallpaper, and you can do your work on top of it. That's how I generally view video, since it makes it easier to multitask. I'm not sure if this is ATI specific, but in IE, 'ATi TV' is integrated so you can open a small window right above favorites (when you open it you automatically open favorites along with it) to view video, with it's own volume controls. Needless to say, it's very useful when playing Firepro. And finally there's a whole slew of other features, including video auto record (main formats to choose from), wide screen, etc. I should mention, as it was a part of your question, the card has S-Video out also. All in all, I've really loved it. My dorm room is a closet, and it saves so much more space this way. I didn't buy the card for it's performance, obviously, because Geforces are faster, but I got what I paid for (at the time, $200), and I think it was worth every cent. Heck, I still get great performance on GTA3 (800x600x32, 70fps) on this card, so it performs alright, too. | ||||
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Cooljerk | Oct 21, 2002 | |
I have a TNT2 with tv out, and it sucks... while the TV out options are good (TONS of resolution settings), and the actual card is good, it lacks duel monitor support. Sure, it gets the job done (I can see my MST3K on my tv  ), but it'd still be much cooler to surf the net while doing so. | |||