Using a 43" TV for Display

Hi, My question is for the people who use their TV as a secondary display for either games or movies. Currently my home theatre system cosists of a 43" Philips TV and a Pioneer DVD + Bose Sound System. I want to rig up my Computer to the TV and the Music System so that I may watch my DivX movies on it. The sound is no problem as I can hook it up to my Creative Sound Card but for display I will have to use TV-out from my pc by installing a separate card or getting an external TV-Tuner which supports TV-out. I used to have a Sis6326 AGP card which supported TV-out on my pc way back in 1998 but the display on the Tv wasn't anything to write home about. Is investing in a TV-out a decent choice, are we able to get good quality? My Tv supports Composite, S-Video & Component Inputs but I guess this card would support S-Video & Composite Only. Do the AGP cards with TV-out give good quality. What I mean by quality is the absence of artefacts like noise of ghost-image on the display.

yeap,the quality on my 32" sony by ati8500 is great.I saw a geforce2mx something on my tv,it wasnt thaaat bad,but tvtool was used or else it is even worst.But the maximum was 800x600 (mine at 1024x768)as I can remember.I dont use any special program for the tvout.The geometry seems ok,and many people who have watch dvds and encoded movies have been suprised by the quality.I dont remember though that the guy with the geforce couldnt get into the bios only with the tvout...

I have a Radeon 9800 Pro which gives an amazing TV out picture for divx playback. You can connect the TV at the same time in a dual setup and I've found that cloning the picture to the TV a lot easier with the ATI drivers than the nvidia ones. The new 3.9 (and 3.8) Catalyst drivers also have an overlay feature which gives a nice output to the televsion without having to adjust too many settings. You can select your output in the drivers by just selecting your country and it will auto select pal/ntsc. You can also select which type of connection you are using ie svideo or composite. And when you start a movie it will automatically play full screen on the TV. Your TV out is however restricted to 60Mhz but you can use flicker removal to help set it right. You woon't get a stand alone DVD player picture quality though.

But still one has to remamber that it is a big problem with ati drivers. The power of radeons is greater than nvidias cards, but the drivers are so bad, that I can not play many games - from alien vs predator to neverwinter nights. And it is not that my computer is too slow - just the problem is drivers. I use only oryginal ones so maybe I do not know about some third firm made sollutions, but in fact i do not have time to veryfie it. Abou this I'm very dissapointed.

Wow Thanks Guys! that was very helpful. I think I am going to go the ATI way and buy an AGP card. Time to give my faithful and dear Voodoo3 some rest, its given me almost 4 years of gr8 service. Unfortunately ATI cards are a rare sight here in this place that I live in India. Even an Optical Microsoft Mouse is hard to spot... I'm going to have to import the ATI. How much does a ATI retail for (US$)? And the AGP comes in different flavours 7000, 8500 etc. which one to go in for? I checked out a couple of chinese made TV Tuner cards (PCI) which also seemed to offer TV-out. There wasn't much documentation but it did say VGA out on the card and had an S-Video & Composite out as well as RF, S-Video & Composite In. Couldn't try them though. Tomorrow will try to borrow one from the shop and try @ home on my PC. I think it's a sweet enough deal even if it's just a TV-tuner @ about $25-30(US). I guess res won't be as hot as a Graphics Card and picture quality will be poor but worth a shot. What I want to do is take my old PC and make it into a standalone DivX player with my TV. I already have a DVD Player so will use an old Creative Infra CD-Rom Drive instead of DVD drive. The creative Infra will suit a dual purpose as it has a remote with it which will control functions. The Infra's remote only works with it's own software Player but the trick is to use the Num keys and remap them in BSplayer, that way 1 to 0 when pressed will perform the function as mapped on the keyboard Numpad. The downside is the Infra remote only supports ME & 98. But I guess for the purpose of displaying divX i don't need XP anyway. Processor is 700 PIII with 256mb Ram, will plug in an old 20gig samsung and my DivX player is ready to rock. Just waiting on the TV-out. Just buying an ATI for this old PC seems like overkill for my pocket so looking for cheaper options first. Then maybe I'll put the ATI on my new PC. Ciao Anshu

Well, what about price you centairly have to decide what you want. If you need only TV output you should look around model olny with TV out (neither Vivo nor all in wonder) because it is much cheaper. And the quality as far as I know is very good. In this case it is a big difference in power of models. If you wanna play games take at least radeon 9600 or higher - the price begins at about 150 $ and up, up and up :) Models 9000 till 9200 are economy versions, but still the quality of picture if very good, just the graphic accelerator is worse - good if you do not play, like for standalone DivX player price about 80 - 100 $. If you look good you could find a model even with remote control. The Vivo cards are with output and input, so you have concerne if you need this. It is higher in price about 50 $ from the same model output only. All in wonder cards are vivo plus TV tuner, plus remote control, and some other features, still you have to think of if you need it or not. The price starts from 200$. You could look for older models like radeon 8500 which is really great cost now a bit lower. I wanted to make such divxplayer but you have to know tha - you will not be able to use this computer to other things - a little games, but read my last post about drivers. Forget about doing any work on TV. It is to blured. 2) it is noisy - the coolers are really noisy as well as DVD, and it will disturb a lot. 3) it will take a lot of place near TV, and add a lot of cables what will cainterly make sittuacion a bit difficult if you want to change anything there. Because of this problem try to think about normal standalone DIVX players like Kiss or LiteOn. You will have DVD and divx player in one thing, no mentioned above problems, still good picture quality, but also have another problems instad :) It is your choice :)