Why does TV-Out suck?

[digitalallstar]

Is it just me or does this feature leave something to be desired. I am really interested in building a HTPC but my TV only has S-VHS input. I've tried about three cards w/ TV-Out and they all look like crap (Radeon 8500, GeForce 4 Ti4600 VIVO). The picture is not clear and the borders do not seem to be straight or even meet the edge of the screen. MAX resolution on these cards in TV mode is 800x600. To my understanding tha AIW series of radeon board let you ramp it up to 1024x768. Does this look any better? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[rbV5]

To my understanding tha AIW series of radeon board let you ramp it up to 1024x768. Does this look any better?

Not for video it does'nt and all the radeon's beyond the first gen cards support 1024X768 vis TV-out btw. I use the higher resolution for gaming only, 640 X 480 is all you need for SD TV or DVD's anyway. The s-video output of my AIW is actually pretty nice however, using overscan it totally fills the screen on my 32" Sanyo and perfectly acceptable image quality for standard broadcast or DVD's.

If you want higher quality video output, start with a higher quality, higher resolution Digital set and use component, VGA or DVI output of your HTPC and enjoy excellent video output. Standard analog broadcast and 480i DVD's aren't exactly all that great at best anyway.

 

[Anubis]

my MSI TI4600 does 1024x768 output from the s-vid. and im using a s-vid to RCA converter cause my TV dosent have a S-vid in. and it looks fine for playing vids and and DVDs. i dont game on it cause its pointless. the moniter will always look better unless you have a really expensive digital TV