VGA to HDTV cable

[cwineman]

My parents just got a HDTV and I want to hook a DVR that I built for them up to it. Right now, I am using the s-video out from the video card into the TV. I'm not impressed with how it looks on the TV. It looks better than it did with the old standard TV, but not what I was expecting.

Anyway, it looks like I have two new options for hooking my DVR to the new TV. I guess I use the VGA out from the DVR in both cases. One option is to use one of two HDMI inputs for the TV. The other is to us the "PC" input to the TV. In both cases I need to buy a special wire.

Does anyone know if one of these methods is better than the other? Also, what should I expect it to look like? I am assuming that it will look much better than it does than with the s-video cable I'm using now.

-cwineman

[whurlston]

S-Video will give you a maximum resolution of 720x480. The PC and HDMI connections will give you 1280x720 (720p HD) or higher depending upon the TV's capabilities. Also the S-Video output is interlaced which does not look good for computer generated text. Running at a progressive resolution like 720p will give you much better results.

If you use the PC connection, make sure you get a shielded cable.


Note: some TVs will be a variation of 720p such as 1024x768 (plasma) or 1366x768 (some LCDs). It's still essentially 720p.

[oostertoaster]

By "PC" input to the TV, I'm assuming you mean DVI? Or is there an actual VGA port on the TV? Either way, it shouldn't make that much of a difference in terms of picture quality, since you are limited to using the analog VGA output from the PC anyway.

[K.S.]

whenever you have a digital output (HDMI, SPDIF), stick to it as long as possible. VGA is only analog, most graphics cards out there have crappy signal quality when going over 1024x768 res

[wtg]

cwineman,

If the TV has a VGA port like some do, you can simply use a standard VGA cable to connect the HTPC to the TV - no special cable needed. However, if your HTPC's video card has DVI output like many do, you can use a DVI->HDMI cable for the best all-digital connection. In practice you may not be able to see any difference between the two. Either should be a huge step-up from s-video however.

[flyswatta]

I have the "PC" input on my LCD TV and I'm using a male to male vga cable. Got one at Fry's for $20 - it was marketed as a "laptop to projector" video cable. My resolution is set to 1366x768 and it looks great.

Whurlston, what resolution do you set it to for 1080i? Nevermind - I found the answer in another post

SDTV: 480i (640 x 480), EDTV: 480p (720 x 480), HDTV: 720p (1280 x 720), HDTV: 1080p (1920 x 1080).

[whurlston]

I would run at whatever your panels native resolution is. No point in upconverting to 1080p with the HTPC just to have the TV downconvert it back to 720p.

[flyswatta]

Yeh, a little research on the tv revealed that the max resolution for "PC" input was 1366x768 - still looks darn good, though.

[whurlston]

That's what I run mine at and it looks great. Well I actually use something like 1352x746 or something strange like that to get rid of a bit of overscan.

My TV actually accepts a 1080p signal on the PC port but with the downscaling, text is not as crisp. 720p looks much cleaner.