Hooking my TV up to my Video Card

[Yohhan]

A few questions for anyone who can help...

1. I'd like to hook my TV up to my video card. I'm using a GeForce4 with a TV/S-Video Out connector. How exactly does this work? My television doesn't have a comparable looking slot to plug into. I have the connector for the antennae/cable hookup, and then a "video in" "audio in" on the front of the TV. Can I buy some sort of cord that'll connect the S-Video Out connector to this TV?

2. Also, how can I save my favorite shows onto my hard drive? Is this complicated to do? What does it require?

3. What does the "DVI Connector" on my video card do?

Sorry if any of this was difficult to follow. I don't know much about the terminology, so it was hard to explain. Thanks for any help.

 

[Jeff7]

1. There are adapters available that let you connect S-video to RCA; I don't know how much it might degrade the quality though.
2. Yes, but it depends on what kind of videocard you have. Also know that video can chug down hard drive space like mad. If you want full-screen TV quality, think somewhere around 60MB/min. If you have a 750MHz+ processor, you can use Divx to do some serious compression to the video. I compress full-screen MPEG2 files to 65% original size (704x480 original) and use Divx. That is more like 15MB/min then, but it is somewhat lower quality.
3. DVI connector was designed to output a pure digital signal for LCD's. The regular monitor connector is analog; LCD's use digital signals, so they had to convert the analog signal to digital, which could result in visual distortion. The DVI connector eliminates that step completely.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yep.

Your TV tends to have a combination of SCART, S-Video, composite and sandard RF (in order of quality though thru TVout it isn't hugely important). You can get leads to convert your video cards port to SCART, S-Video or composite which are all designed to carry one signal only while RF is the same type of lead used to carry your usual TV signals, for this you need an RF converter box (or whatever it's called) or a VCR which should have the same type of slots as a TV. The precise names and specs may vary a bit fdrom country to country, ask at your local hw shop may help esp if you take along a scetch, lead or the card itself.

To save progs there are diff sw and formats. MPEG1/VCD means you can fit a movie at VHS type quality on 1 CD. MPEG2/SVCD means you can store near DVD-quality movie on 2 CDs. MPEG4/DivX means you can have great control over the size and quality, generally the best method to use so long as your CPU can deliver the good in real time. You can get a TV card which can hw encode MPEG1 or MPEG2 which will help your CPU out.