TV Output, divx decoding

[Gurck]

Couldn't find exactly what I wanted doing a search, I'm going to be building a low-end system for an aunt and couldn't figure out how to go about the video output... Ordinarily I'd select a mb with integrated video, as it'll be a cold day in hell before she's playing Far Cry and such, but as this system will be right near a TV, I figured it'd be nice if she could watch DVDs and some divx-encoded movies on the tv instead of the monitor. It doesn't have s-video in; it's an older model with only coaxial input. What's the cheapest/simplest way to output to this TV? Other question is probably stupid, but better safe than sorry - will an xp2500+ with 256mb ram decode divx movies ok? Only reason I ask is that my own rig stutters divx movies if I have a download coming in and the movie is on the same drive I'm downloading to. I know that's hdd-related, but it made me wonder about how much stress decoding these movies places on the system - would I be better off going with 512mb ram for her pc?

 

[otispunkmeyer]

get yourself a ATI Radeon 9600......most have TV out and the neat thing about these is that the DivX player is written to take advantage of atis fullstream technology this uses the GPU to post process the the Divx file and reduces the load on the CPU to about 20%!!! and it looks fantastic!!!

 

[Marsumane]

If this system is for your aunt, and she isnt really all that into computers and all, id expect spyware and adware to be filling that hard drive and taking up resources. many computers ive worked on have had this issue and adding more ram would have made them usable, compared to their found to be unusable state. further more, divx encoding would be helped by more ram also. kingston is having a sale till the end of this month (i think) on kingston ddr value ram. go into the hot deals forum and check it out.

 

[Gurck]

Naw not encoding, just decoding - to watch. I'm planning on installing AVG, Adaware, Spybot, and Spywareblaster, as well as Mozilla for browsing & email, to curb the spyware, as she knows nothing about computers. I visit semi-frequently, so I can keep an eye on things as well.

 

[Gurck]

So, anyone? Cheap output to a TV with only coaxial input?

 

[oLLie]

What you could do is just find a cheap video card that has S-video out, or RCA (or is it called composite?) out and then send it to a VCR (assuming the S-video in or RCA in on the VCR is not in use), then use the VCR's coax out to hit the TV (my VCR has coax out, hopefully it's the same everywhere).

Ollie