Best video card for DVD on TV

[Motero]

I'm building a computer for a friend and he wants to be able to hook his computer to his TV so he can play DVD's on his TV. Which video card would work the best for playing his DVD's on his 25 inch TV? Would it work well with his MSI k7t pro2-a mobo?

 

[NutBucket]

ATI ATI ATI. Excellent DVD support, excellent tv output. Even if you go with a Rage 128, which i hope you don't, the DVD and tv output will be stellar.

 

[Taz4158]

Avoid the Rage. The Radeon is however superb.

 

[DeathKnightMaF]

From what I have heard before the best choice is to get a separate decoder card. The image quality will be far more superb than that of any gfx card decoding Though decoder cards are only good for if you want to hook them up to a tv. They in no way help the image quality on a monitor. For monitor viewing go with an ATI card like the Radeon. For tv out, go for a separate decoder card

 

[pidge]

Matrox G400 but it doesn't have motion compensation so its not good if you are doing extensive work. The ATI AIW Radeon and 128 seemed a little washed out to me. Not bad. Excellent but not as good as my setop or Matrox G400.

 

[Workin']

Get a Radeon. The difference between it and a Hollywood+ decoder card in TV-out quality is negligible, but the H+ only outputs DVD to your TV. NOT Divx, NOT games, NOT the desktop, NOT anything else. So your flexibility is nil.

 

[bolomite]

But with such high CPU speeds these days, the difference in picture quality between software decoding and dedicated hardware playback is basically unnoticeable.

 

[pidge]

Just curious. Does PowerDVD support DVD through the TV out connector on your video card or does Macrovision kick in when you go to TV out mode?

 

[Hawk]

G400 setup looks better than the Radeon's? So that means software is better? Really? Everytime I watch it on software only I see interlaced lines, but not hardware (ATI, decoder).

 

[Workin']

<< G400 setup looks better than the Radeon's? >>

No way, Jose' However, the dual-head setup is advantageous in some situations, since you can have the TV and monitor on at the same time using different resolutions/refresh rates. With the Radeon, both displays MUST use the same settings. So, like anything else, there are trade-offs.

 

[pidge]

I am just saying that the colors looked washed out, like a VHS tape sort of. The Matrox looked more colorful. I don't know. I remember with the Matrox, I was really impressed but with the Radeon's DVD on tv, I wasn't because it looked worse than my DVD settop. Oh well. If you guys say so. Its been a while since I used a Matrox video card.

 

[TravisBickle]

Matrox should have good image quality. it's called digital vibrance colour control ((I hope I'm not talking about nvidia's version)) or something. it's one of their selling points. I would have bought the G450 for that wizzo dual head video play but the 3d performance sucks.