Video Card with best quality TV out (on a 27" TV used as the primary display) ?

[psxjunky]

Could someone please suggest a video card that provides the best display quality when a 27" TV is used as the primary display ?

I need this for my secondery PC in the living room which uses a 27" Sony TV as its primary display. I primarily use this PC for video editing applications and for watching DVDs/SVCDs; so I do not need a very high end video card ... I am just looking for one that gives me the best display quality on the TV.

I am currently using a ATI Radeon LE card with 32MB DDR, and the display is *REALLY* crappy. Given the inherent low resolution of a TV CRT, I don't expect the display to be compareable to a real PC monitor ... but I am sure there is something out there that will give me better results than what I am getting now.

Price is not a major factor for me ... display quality is. So even though I don't need a high end card, if that gives me superior TV display I am ready to get one.

Thanks in advance for ANY suggestion !

 

[Spicedaddy]

I'd say the ATI cards have the best quality... What resolution does your Radeon support? Is your TV a Wega or just a plain TV?


A Radeon 9000 or higher might look better, but I'm not sure there'll be a huge difference. What makes the biggest difference is using S-Video because composite looks like crap. If you're already using S-Video at 1024x768, there's not much to do. TVs just aren't made to display a computer desktop.

 

[UncleWai]

What Sony 27" do you have.... Is it the new hd ready version?
If so, buy a Radeon 8500 and get the HDTV adapter.

Or, you can get a TView gold which its purpose is to do tv out.
I heard it is the best.

 

[psxjunky]

Thanks Spicedaddy !

I am running the Radeon LE at 800x600. It does support 1024x768, but at that resolution it makes the virtual desktop bigger and I have to scroll to get from end to end. Even at 800x600 I am having a real hard time reading some of the text (they are just so unclear and smudged out). In fact I wish the Radeon LE supported a 640x480 mode, but doesn't look like it supports it (or maybe it is WinXP Pro that doesn't support it).

I am definitely using S-Video ... I had tried the composite output too and that was *soooo* much worse :Q

My TV is a regular Sony 27" ... not a WEGA. Does the WEGA models support a better resolution ?

Does anyone here use a Radeon 9000 or higher and have tried the TV out ? If so I would be really interested in knowing your experience.

 

[psxjunky]

UncleWai: No this is not the HDTV version.

What is this TView Gold that you mentioned ? Is it a separate TV viewing hardware ? Does it only work with the ATI cards ?

I am heading over to Google right now to find more info on TView Gold, but if you have any pointers I would sure appreciate those.

 

[UncleWai]

I have a Radeon 8500 and a plain old 27" sony wega.
There's nothing much you can do.
A television can't handle text well.
I Only use tvout for movie or gaming.
Tview Gold have two versions, one pci card and ther other one is a convertor.
go to compusa.com and search tview for more information

 

[Spicedaddy]

A non-digital Wega won't support higher than 480i (640x480 interlaced). It might look a little crisper being a better quality TV, but the difference wouldn't be huge. I use a 9700 Pro with a 27" plain Wega. It looks good for movies and games, but text is blurry.


The only way to get decent image on a TV is to have an HDTV and an ATI card with the component video adapter. (I think 8500 and up support it) Even then it won't replace a real monitor, but it'll be much better than a regular TV...

 

[psxjunky]

Thanks !

I found a lot of info about the TView Gold at the manufacturers website. This seems IDEAL for my purpose ! Thanks very much for pointing me to this.

Now the question is, what is the ABSOLUTE BEST scan converter out there ! While searching for the TView Gold, I noticed there are some other comparable products from other manufacturers (ADS Tech etc.).

Is TView Gold considered the absolute best ?

Also, what's the difference between the PCI card version, TView Gold external box and the TView Silver external box ?

Finally, the lowest price that I found for the TView Gold external box is @ Multiwave ($146.95). Is there any place that sells this cheaper ?

 

[chucky2]

psxjunky- You might want to also try and researching/posting over at the AVS Forums.

Those people live and breath this stuff like we do PC hardware.

Good luck!

Chuck

 

[Morph]

I'm surprised that you find the Radeon tv-out so poor. ATI is generally considered to have one of the best tv-out implementations. Some other good ones are:

Matrox G400/G450/G550 - These cards supposedly have excellent tv-out and great support for dual display if you get a dualhead version. In your case I suppose you could get by with a singlehead version, which you could pick up on EBay for cheap.

Geforce2/3/4 + TVTool software - You need a card with a TVTool-supported tv-out chip. You'll get the best results with a card that has the Conexant CX25871. TVTool costs about $10, see tvtool.com for more info.

 

[Shalmanese]

No offence but buying the best TV-out converter aint going to help much if the TV your running it on is crap (and TV's are almost universally crap for displaying PC stuff). Have you actually LOOKED at other people's computers being driven by a TV? I think you'll find that almost nobody can read text clearly at 800x600 and I even struggle at 640x480 most of the time. TV should be used for games, not web surfing.

 

[StrongBad]

I have a samsung tv with s-video in and a decient resolultion...
and movies and games look great on it driven from my Original ATI all-in-wonder radeon...
But text just isn't going to look good on ANY tv from a video card out. TV's have relatively HORID rezolution compared to a monitor... so just don't expect the video card to make a big difference in this whole matter.

 

[psxjunky]

Thanks for all the replies guys !

chucky2: Thanks for the pointer to AVS Forums ... I'll head over there right now.

Morph: I have the very first generation Radeon LE and also since I haven't compared the display quality with anything else, I can't say how it stands relative to the competition; but by itself it looks pretty bad to me . I have a GeForce3 Ti200 in my other PC which has a TV Out as well (it is the VisionTek Xtasy 6564), so maybe I'll try that card in this PC and see if that makes any difference. Thanks for the info about TV Tool; I'll try that.

Shalmanese: Yes, I already agreed with you in my original post that I can't expect PC monitor quality output from the TV ... but should it be sooo bad that I can't read the text AT ALL :Q I mean as long as the text quality is usable I am happy; but the video quality needs to be as good as I can make it because my primary use for this PC is viewing and editing video and occasionally playing games. Right now the video quality is not as horrible as the text, but it is not great either

What I am interested in knowing is whether forking over $150 or so for a scan converter like TView Gold will be justified. If it makes the text easily readable (even if not super crisp) and makes the video look really good, I'd consider it worth it.

Anyone with first hand experience with TView Gold care to comment ?

 

[Jugernot]

Believe it or not... the Geforce 4 MX series has one of the best TV Outputs out there! I did a double when view text on my 32" Toshiba through it's svideo out. Tons better than my GF2 and better than a Radeon 8500 I tried.

I've also read this all over the net also. It uses a integrated TV encoder in the die and doesn't use a seperate chip on the board. It's quite good.

 

[RobsTV]

Using TView Gold here with a 10 year old 53" Sony, and it is great.
TV's are what I do for a living (see user name).
Have tried just about all TV out solutions, including $16,000 projectors (as a test only, not that stupid).
TView is the best low cost solution.
It handles any resolution your video card can put out, even 1600x1200 at 152hz.
Because it is an external stand alone device, it works with any video card.
One time investment. Upgrade video cards, and it's still there.
No drivers needed. Plugs in like a monitor would, yet has a pass through so you can still use monitor.

But, as stated by others, gaming is what these are all best suited for.
Internet browsing, with fonts set correctly, is acceptable.
You can install special included fonts to make text even better (haven't tried that).

The made 2 versions with same part number.
Old version used FS200 chip (I think), and does not support all resolutions, and is poorer quality.
Make sure it has the newer FS400 chip. 1600x1200@152hz is good indicator that it's the FS400. Better filters as well.

These are available on e8ay for around $100.

 

[psxjunky]

Thanks Rob !

Over the weekend I ordered a TView Gold (the newer version with FS400) from Buy.com. Have heard a lot of good things about it ... will report here if it meets my expection.

One question for you - did the TView work perfectly for you out of the box, or did you have to do a lot of tweaking first ? If so, what kind of adjustments did you make ?

 

[tuan121]

i think Radeon 9700!

 

[bmacd]

For what it's worth: i've gone through two TView Golds and one TView Silver. Something on them burns up...i never dealt with the manufacturer...until CompUSA forced me to after trying to exchange the last gold one i bought. They worked pretty good when i had it working...i used the S-Video out (usually) while playing GTA2 (one of the few games i had on my rig at the time). I think i still have a TView gold lying around somewhere...

-=bmacd=-

 

[RobsTV]

Originally posted by: psxjunky
Thanks Rob !

One question for you - did the TView work perfectly for you out of the box, or did you have to do a lot of tweaking first ? If so, what kind of adjustments did you make ?

Yep, works right out of the box. No adjustments to make.
If you want, you can use the included remote to adjust size and such to your liking.
Boots up as though it was a monitor, with all correct screens and resolutions from Bios setup, to Dos boot, to Windows.

DVD's play back just as well as my normal TV top DVD box. No difference in image quality.

Another great use is when friends come over for some LAN gaming.
No need to bring monitor as one of them can use TV.

Another great use is multiplayer games.
Regularly use 53" for 3 or 4 player Links 2001 golf, as well as 3 or 4 drivers using Hotseat feature in GP4.
My primary monitor is a great Hitachi SuperScan 21", but still prefer the 53" TV for gaming, as it really puts you in the game!

I couldn't imagine how bad it would be to have to game with a 17" or worse monitor.

 

[Wasert]

Why don't you consider buying a better TV instead?

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: Wasert
Why don't you consider buying a better TV instead?

I agree. Why don't you buy a nice 21 or 22 inch monitor that will make everything look ten times better instead of spending all this money on other components to get everything to look marginally better on your TV.

 

[UncleWai]

You can't compare TV with monitor. For intensive fps games, of course a monitor will do wonders.
But for the sport games, there's nothing like sitting on a big couch with a huge tv 3 meters away from you.

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: Shanti

Originally posted by: Wasert
Why don't you consider buying a better TV instead?

I agree. Why don't you buy a nice 21 or 22 inch monitor that will make everything look ten times better instead of spending all this money on other components to get everything to look marginally better on your TV.

I don't want to buy a bigger monitor because this is my living room PC and I use it mostly for backing up programs from my TiVo ... so I would eventually want to view them on the TV screen. My main PC already has a nice 19" monitor that I am pretty happy with !

I would eventually be buying a nicer TV ... but I still can't afford the one I have my eyes on

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: UncleWai
You can't compare TV with monitor. For intensive fps games, of course a monitor will do wonders.
But for the sport games, there's nothing like sitting on a big couch with a huge tv 3 meters away from you.

Yeah, I know, but he was talking about a 27". And it just seemed that a 21 or 22" monitor would not be that much smaller.

Just an idea.