TV out quality

[sparek]

I'm looking into building a media center box to connect to my TV. The box would mainly be used to watch streaming video from the Internet through the TV in my living room. I really don't know what video card I should be looking at. I'm not interested in 3D gaming or anything that requires a lot of muscle from a graphics card. I'm really more interested in a video card that would just provide the best TV out quality.

I am assuming that some of the ATI offerings would probably be best, but again, I'm really not sure and I'm just looking for any opinion.

Thanks

 

[BassBomb]

is ur tv hdtv? firstly?

as far as i know, ati is still on top, but not by much... so if price really matters nvidia may win u over

 

[sparek]

Sorry, I meant to mention that in the original post and I forgot. No, I don't have HDTV. Just a 4-pin s-video input and the composite video.

Price would also be a factor, but really I'm not sure of what price range I would be looking at, so I haven't really set a price range yet. The main thing I'm looking for is picture quality. A fried of mine used a video card several years ago hooked up to a TV and said the quality wasn't very good, but I also think he was trying to play games on with it, which I'm not really after. If it comes down to two cards and one card offers superior tv out quality and is only say $15 more, then I would be willing to invest the additional $15. It may be that there really just isn't any noticeable difference between different brands, so then the least expensive card would probably be the one I would go after. I just really do not have any clue as to what chipset or model I should be looking at.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Lord Banshee]

my 9800pro was a tad bit better s-video out compared to my 6800nu.. But i am sure 90% of the people will not see a difference..

Personly i would get a X1300(pro if you want some gameing too).

Remember the highest res on a non-HDTV will be 800x600 or 1024x768.

 

[RobsTV]

Get ATi for best TV Out results.
Nearly every PC I build is for use as a HTPC, with many using svideo and composite.
I notice a huge difference between ATi and nvidia.
I would be embarrassed if I had to rely on nvidia TV out for customers.
Even motherboards with onboard nvidia require adding an ATi card if acceptable TV out is desired.
Gaming will be just as good as streaming video. Looks great.
Text is the thing that will always be poor to fair quality. (including Internet browsing).
Steaming video with ATi will have better contrast and saturation than best tweaked nvidia can provide.

 

[0roo0roo]

i've heard nvidia is catching up, or past ati. atleast on some forums griping about ati breaking stuff or having theater mode always use 720x480 or whatever instead of what they want. svideo is ok atleast on my old radeon 9000pro. software adjustment to fill the screen still a gripe here since it doesn't really fill the screen without overscan, and then it just distorts it and locks the controls so i can't correct it. quality is still only so so since theres so much conversion going on, lots of stuff is captured interlaced..or converted to progressive, then when the pc decodes it to progressive, passes it to the tv encoder which then makes it interlaced again..ick

i'd get an xbox and hack it with the media center software, but it isn't fast enough to play hrhd files and such. hopefully they mod the 360 soon