I'm working on building my GB-PVR home theater computer and was wondering everyone's thoughts on a TV out card. I'm working on a pretty tight budget (less than $75 if possible).
I currently have an old ATI Radeon VE and when I use the S-Video to output to my TV, GB-PVR works OK but it is almost impossible to read any text it's so blurry. I've put it on the lowest resolution and it barely helps.
Any ideas or suggestions?
I'm using a Radeon 9250 AGP and have no complaints. I forget the model number but the equivelant Nvidia had some interlacing issues with my widescreen Tv for some reason.
Connected via S-Video and picture quality is quite acceptable. Perfectly fine for viewing TV or movies but quite lousy for reading any small text at 1024x768. If I need to do any maintenence on the box I do it via VNC on my other computers. But that's a limitation of the Tv, not the card..8)
For some unknown reason I bought passivly cooled cards. In hindsight I would not recommend this as the amount of heat they put out is alarming. I'm currently looking at replacing the heatsink with a sink/fan combo to dissapate the heat more effectivly.
I think I paid about $50 AU for the card new, so if budget is paramount try looking on eBay. This type of card has crappy 3D performance so people upgrading a low end machine don't see them as having much value if at all. Which is all perfectly fine for a Pvr..
You need hardware deinterlacing to get a sharp picture.
Cards with hardware deinterlacing:
ATI 9550 and upwards
Nvidia 6200 and upwards (6100 if onboard). Caution some users are experincing problems with Nvidia cards (search the forum)
You would also be better to use component interface (YPrPb/YCrCb) if your TV supports it.
i'm using a x1300. its passivly cooled (which does put off alot of heat, but there and opening in the side of the case right above it.) and it works great for me. has support for all the latest features (some of them), can do component out, and its cheap. i don't read anything on the computer other than menus and what not. anything else i need to do, i just vnc into it.
Heres a link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814102001
A passively cooled card is what you want when the pc is in the living room. Silence vs potentially very loud (high pitched) g/card fans.
Unless you have a heatsink that exhausts the heat out of the back of your case, a passive card is not dumping any more heat into the case than a fan cooled one.
I would be cautious regarding the 64bit memory interface, some people on this forum have experienced performance issues. I would recommend 128bit memory interface.
I bought that card ig888ack, and so far it's performing better than I had expected. I'm still tweaking the picture though, haven't been able to get the picture as sharp as normal TV.
Zato - how smooth is motion?
Do you see any studdering or jumpy motion?
(this is what I would expect to see if the 64bit memory interface is a bottleneck)
I have heard (i'm not sure if it's correct) that for the most part it doesn't matter because Svideo for tv watching is not the best quality hook up anyway. The card won't necessarily make a difference... so you can get a cheapy card and get pretty much the same quality--did i hear wrong?