cheap card with GOOD TV-out for HT PC

[zobskyX]

Hi, ...
when I upgrade in the next week, I will have 256MB PC2100 RAM, an extra DVD-ROM and a 1GHz athlon-C with a GC-68 heatsink left over. I'm thinking of plopping these into a cheap case with maybe a budget ECS motherboard and a 40GB drive ( i have a spare) to make up a Hometheater PC (HTPC).

estimated cost (off the top of my head)
case $50
video card $70 plus / minus a few

questions:
1. is there anyone out here who regularly outputs their PC to their TV. Any opinions on this quality vs. a dedicated DVD player output quality. I seem to recall building a radeon 7500 based system for a friend sometime ago and I wasn't impressed with the TV out quality, everything seemed fuzzy. Was this the exception, rather than the rule? I would also want to be able to play AVIs / downloaded movies using this PC (something most DVD players can't do)

2. which card do i use. this will not be my gaming rig, ..so image quality on the TV-out matters more than FPS. Not lookign to spend too much
3. Eventually, if the picture quality works out fine, this PC will expand its role to a digital video recorder (add TV tuner card), ..i may even add a HDTV card (if these catch on and the price subsides a bit)

Bottom line
would i be better off with a DVD player or should I invest in this PC as a long term solution


Thanks

 

[Lonyo]

Video output seemed a lot better than monitor output when I hooked up to a TV using a GF 4 Ti4400 (Creative).
*to clarify this: I played a music vid with WMP fullscreen and it looked fairly sharp, and like a TV broadcast, but looking at web pages/desktop etc really sucked ass*

You might be OK for videos, even though the monitor output (desktop) might suck.

As for a future proof PC, if you DON'T plan on recording TV shows, you'd probably be OK, but with a 40gig HDD and "only" a 1GHz Athlon, encoding recorded media might take a while and the HDD might fill up quite quickly.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

If I were you I'd consider getting something like a Geforce 4 VIVO or Radeon All-in-Wonder.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both. It seems that there are Radeon cards which are able to encode MPEG-2 "on the fly", due to the Rage 2 chip that thay have. So if you want to make DVDs, this might be a better solution than nVidia...

I strongly advocate the use of HTPC as opposed to standalone DVD players, since you can play pretty much anything and any region DVDs on your TV. What you might have seen at your friend's place was a fluke - most video cards these days, paired with decent software, will give you quality comparable to standalone DVD players... For nVidia cards, look for TV out chips made by Philips and Chrontel, and avoid the Brooktree chips.

edit - since you're not looking for gaming, go with an ATI Radeon card... maybe an 8500 All-in-Wonder or something along these lines.

you can see the conclusion of this Anand review:

ATI vs. nVidia vs. Matrox

I suggest you go to this site and look at the reviews:

Video card reviews collection

 

[rbV5]

DVD players are cheap, definately your best, user friendly, cheapest solution..but I enjoy my HTPC's so much more. Check out AVS forum.

 

[zobskyX]

cool stuff, ...

i don't need this rig for gaming or encoding DVDs, ...that's what my main PC (probably an XP2100+ or an XP2500+, will decide when I get my motherboard in a couple of days) is for, ...seems like a mid-range RADEON or AIW is the way to go.

Thanks all