Best video card for tv and office tasks at the same time?

[Bentrold]

I am a newbie on video cards and I am planning on getting a new video card (preferably w/ passive cooling) that lets me do office work, while the kids watch a dvd/vcd on the tv any suggestions??
I am not planning on doing any extensive gameing, but I will do some photo editing.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well the Radeons would seem the best solution, the drivers of the Rad9500PRO allows something called Theatre mode which can send the video stream FULL SCREEN to the 2nd display device (eg TV). This sounds like exactly what you need ... plus TVout on the Radeons is VERY good too! Any Radeon with dual RAMDACs SHOULD be able to do this as Rad9500PRO are more for the serious gamer. Perhaps try a Rad7500 or more preferably Rad9000 which should both be very cheap and like the Rad9500PRO offer excellent DVD playback, '2D' image quality etc etc.

 

[Bentrold]

Thank You

It sounds like a radeon would do the trick!!
Does any geforce card have a similar feature??

 

[Acanthus]

NVIDIA has the exact same feature across the board, for every graphics card....

 

[AnAndAustin]

Not quite true Acanthus. nVidia can compete in DX8 against the likes of the Radeon8500/9100 as the GF4TI are superior BUT the pricing reflects that so again the DX8 Radeons are still in with a shout. nVidia still don't have DX9 parts on the street and even when they do arrive they are inferior to the Radeon solutions and will surely be priced higher too. Not only that but the Radeons still win in terms of '2D' image quality, AA+AF, hw DVD/MPEG playback and TVout. Their DX9 drivers and hw are also far more mature and I know the Radeon9500PRO can do what this guy wants, I'm pretty sure the lesser Radeons will also do what he wants provided they come with dual RAMDACs (all 9000 should) and I know for a fact the GF4TI can't do what he wants ... the only solution their drivers allow is making a horizontal spanning desktop and dragging the video windows over to the right hand display which is a very cludged solution, esp since nVidia's TVout already leaves much to be desired!

 

[Bentrold]

Thank you again AnAndAustin that was what I thought, I am currently running an old TNT2 32mb w/tv-out and it leaves much to be desired

Cool breezes
Bentrold