TV-Out Quality

[BornStar]

I'm using a 450 PII computer for my entertainment system right now (Bart in my rigs). It has a Voodoo3 3500TV for the TV-out but the quality isn't very good and DVDs really tear it to pieces. It runs Windows 2000 but I haven't been able to find any real drivers for the card in 2000. I want to buy a new card (probably GeForce2 MX) that has TV-out but I want to make sure the quality is good before I buy one. I'm looking at the Leadtek GeForce2 MX400 right now. Does anybody know if it is good quality and does it display both all of Windows so I won't need a monitor connected to my computer? Thanks for any insight you might have.

 

[UncleWai]

No you wouldn't want a GF card for TV-out, either an ATI or a Matrox card.

sort of off topic, but i have a Radeon LE with tv-out for sell, if you are interested, please pm or email me.

 

[chibchakan]

Originally posted by: UncleWai
No you wouldn't want a GF card for TV-out, either an ATI or a Matrox card.

I agree with UncleWai, stay away from any GeForce2 MX card if the quality of TV-out is important.

 

[BornStar]

There's only one small problem with quality being important. My TV is about 20 years old so the only interface that is available to me is composite. I know that there's a noticeable difference between composite and S-video on the Voodoo but would there be a noticeable difference between different composite outputs. *BornStar needs a new TV*

 

[chibchakan]

I would get a new tv before a new video card if i were you.

 

[BornStar]

I saw that one coming. My rational is that my current video card isn't able to handle dvd decoding well and I need something that can. I just want to have good quality video out available to me if I ever decide I'm rich enough to buy a new TV. College isn't good for my wallet.

 

[BornStar]

I forgot to mention that another reason I would want good quality is when I'm at my parents place (mostly just the summer) I can hook it up to their 36in Toshiba. That has component, s-video and composite.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Without question avoid all GF2 and GF3 cards. That leaves you with GF4MX, Radeon or Matrox. GF4MX have hugely improved image quality over GF2/3 as well as enhancements in both dual display and TVout. Matrox have excellent image quality (not that that's hugely important for you) and dual display and I imagine their TVout should be good too .. VERY poor 3D perf and unreasonable prices though.

So IMHO there is no doubt in my mind that a Radeon is what you should go for. Radeons have great image quality, great TVout and most also sport hw DVD playback, incredibly importtant for such a slow CPU. Just to cover 3D perf, Rad7000 offers GF2MX perf, Rad7500 offers GF2GTS perf (50% faster than GF2MX), Rad9000PRO offers GF3TI200 perf (inc DX8 hw) and Rad8500 offers GF3TI500 perf. I'm not 100% sure about the Rad7000 but all other Rads mentioned sport hw DVD playback and excellent TVout. I'd suggest Rad9000 (non PRO) would be the best choice as I'm very sure this uses hw to enhance all MPEG playback which would be useful for almost all video streams rather than simply MPEG2 used on DVDs, these should be very well priced. Before purchasing a Radeon just be sure to check things like clock speed, abilities, ports and leads supplied as these things can often vary depending upon manu as well as retail vs oem versions. Lots of info on the official true 'BUILT by ATI' Radeons can be found below.

ATI
ATI's Radeon Line

 

[BornStar]

I think what I'm going to do is go to a B&M first to see what I think about image quality. Probably the best way to go about this. I had considered the Radeon 9000 but I think I'd cry if my entertainment computer had a better GPU than my main computer. Thanks for all of your help.

 

[rbV5]

B&M first to see what I think about image quality

I've never...ever seen a PC hooked up via TV-out in a BM (well, actually Fry's occasionally will have a large plasma hooked up), and it took quite an effort(and several stops) to hook-up an LCD panel (envision 7500) to an s-video source to check out picture IQ (CostCo was the ONLY place that was able to make it happen, LOL) so good luck.

Does anybody know if it is good quality and does it display both all of Windows so I won't need a monitor connected to my computer?

My AIW 7500 has very good IQ via TV-out (even on my 15yr old 27" LXI via rf adaptor) and its certainly possible to use it without a monitor, but expect poor text quality (even at its best) and keep a monitor handy, if a proggie changes the resolution/refresh to something your TV doesn't support...you'll need the monitor to boot back into windows.

 

[BornStar]

Originally posted by: rbV5

B&M first to see what I think about image quality

I've never...ever seen a PC hooked up via TV-out in a BM (well, actually Fry's occasionally will have a large plasma hooked up), and it took quite an effort(and several stops) to hook-up an LCD panel (envision 7500) to an s-video source to check out picture IQ (CostCo was the ONLY place that was able to make it happen, LOL) so good luck.

Actually, what I really meant is I was going to get a Radeon 9000 Pro and bring it home which I've already done. I want to see what it's like in person on my TV. I found a Radeon 7000 OEM at Newegg for $40 shipped and I am going to assume that TV-out quality is similar between the 9000 and the 7000 so if I like the 9000, I'll return that and buy the 7000. It's kind of shady but it's the best thing I could come up with.

 

[hasu]

Does the image quality (2d and text) and TV-out differ much between Rad 8500LE and GF4 4200?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Unfortunately most reviewers are too transfixed with benchmarking and raw numbers to really cover image quality in any great depth. This situation is even further complicated by so much depending upon your own personal environment, settings, monitor and setup as well as basicly being a very subjective area.

But for IMAGE QUALITY there is very little in it between Rad8500 and GF4TI until res of 1600x1200x32 with 75Hz+ refresh rate where the Radeon seems to fair better. Matrox are still masters of this but there cards are over-priced and underperform in the 3D dept.

For TVOUT the GF4 cards are improved over the GF2/3 cards by using dual RAMDACs as standard thus meaning that the image can be simultaneously displayed on both TV and monitor at the same time with different res and refresh rates. Also the way in which the TVout chips are implimented means that now all sw and drivers should correctly detect and utilise the TVout ability of the card, something often lost in GF2/3 days and some people now find they have to use very old drivers from the manu to use TVout. However the TVout chips nVidia still use are 3rd party and the drivers do not tweak the output at all, the major drawback of this is that you often get a noticable black border around the edges of the TV (lack of overscan), the image is often off-centre and the sharpness and vibrance of the TV image is lower than that of a Radeon. nVidia can address almost all of this with quite simple driver tweaking, but they don't so nVidia uses who want to enhance TVout are forced to use the 3rd party prog TV-Tool. So Radeons' TVout are a bit clearer, sport centring and overscan adjustment and are all-round much better than any current GeForce card.