Computer to my HDTV = horrible unusable video, how to fix? Possible

[Bitek]

I tried to hook up my computer to my 46" Panasonic widescreen rear-projection HDTV and the video quality was unusable. I have a GF4 4200 that is a couple years old with NVida drivers about that old. I had the input connection thru the DVI port.

The card adjusted to the widescreen ok, but it still was awful. I can't read any text, even when set to large in windows, let alone playback video. The refresh rate is locked at 60hz, and I can't adjust the screen size. Problem as all the windows icons are off the screen (ie start menu, close buttons, etc.) There was nothing I could really do to it.

My hope was to be able to display pics from the digi cam and movies form the camcorder w/o having to burn to disk. Play some games, (strats like GalCivII) but I'd really hope to be able to play Oblivion one day on that Tv w/o having to get teh 360. Is this even possible? Obviously this card is no where good enough for that, but I don't want to drop $ into a vid card to play it, and realize I have to have a 360 to do it on the TV. Obviously the drivers are old, but is that the only problem?

Please let me know. I'm an absolute n00b to HTPCs, but there must be a way for them to look good or no one would bother building them.

 

[kylebisme]

Update your drivers, there are overscan adjustments in the newer ones. As for playing a Oblivion, you could but it takes some hacking to get it working on your old video card and it will really slow on old hardware and look rather crappy as well. You'd just need to upgrade your PC to get that going good though, or you could try Morrowind or other older games on your current setup.

 

[Bitek]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Update your drivers, there are overscan adjustments in the newer ones. As for playing a Oblivion, you could but it takes some hacking to get it working on your old video card and it will really slow on old hardware and look rather crappy as well. You'd just need to upgrade your PC to get that going good though, or you could try Morrowind or other older games on your current setup.

Heh, it would take liquid Jesus to get oblivion to play on my card IMO , but I just want to know that the investment it would take to upgrade my computer to play Oblivion would would much better spent on an Xbox, plus there are a lot of things I want ot display on the TV that are on the computer. I'm just worried I could end up spanding alot of $ and have a sys that really doesn't look very good becasuse there is some inherent flaw to the basic setup. Thanks

 

[DBL]

lower the resolution. What do you have it set to currently?

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Hafen
I'm just worried I could end up spanding alot of $ and have a sys that really doesn't look very good becasuse there is some inherent flaw to the basic setup. Thanks

There is nothing inherently wrong with an HTPC setup, I'm browsing the forum on one right now and I do a lot of gaming on it as well. You can obviously spend a lot of money on it, but a top of the line processor with a couple of videocards and plenty of RAM will make Oblivion look and run better than you could ever dream of on a 360.