Displaying Games/Apps on TV

[goveRtime]

I just built an HTPC from scratch (my first attempt - fortunately no hardware issues). So far, I have just about everything running fine in GB-PVR, however, the picture quality could use A LOT of improvement. Its real grainy and has white lines on the bottom and right hand side of the screen too. Any suggestions?

Anyways, more importantly for now, I want to play games on it and use the TV as the display. I noticed that when using the internet and other applications the visual quality is pretty poor on the TV as the font is difficult to read. Will I run into the same visual quality issues if I play pc games on the TV? When I first started this out, I posted a message that I wanted to use the htpc as pvr, internet, etc and someone said the internet wouldnt work unless I had hdtv. Is this the case with pc games too. If so is there anything i can do other than going out and buying a hdtv?

Thanks for any reponses guys.

[goveRtime]

Recording settings:
In GB-PVR i set my recording profilles (LIVE TV in this case) to maximum high quality. I dont remember the details but it's variable 5500 and 9000 max or something along those lines.

Playback Decoder:
The only playback decoder I have as an option in GB-PVR is the Intervideo one that came with my PVR-150 card. I read in one of these forums that you can/should download a bunch of freeones but I don't really know which ones to download and how to configure them. However, lately I've been thinking about downloading ffdshow and enable it in the GB-PVR configure menu.

I haven't changed any settings in WinTV or the software that came with the card because I don't use any of it other than the IR blaster.

PVR Card: PVR-150

Video Output Card:
Rosewhill GeForce FX5200 w/ 256MB. I haven't changed much of the settings mostly because of ignorance of what I'm doing. I don't know what resolution I should set the TV output to but I ended up with like 760 X 480 or something. That seemed to be the clearest. Other than that I didn't change much on it. My refresh rate is 60. I screwed around with the flicker control but I didn't know much of a differnce and left the slider somewhere in the middle. Any tips on these settings?

Connection: coax to cable box, composite to PVR-150, s-video to tv

White lines on bottom and right side of screen shows up on fullscreen: I think ffdshow might fix this.

Font: Increased that already - pretty obvious decision.

So in the end, my two concerns were 1) improving the recording / playback quality in GB-PVR and 2) if I could play pc games on the tv or if it would just end up looking like other applications (such as IE) other than GB-PVR output. I want to clear that up before I start investing into some pc game stuff (doom 3!) or if it will just look like crap and be unplayable on my TV - its just a regular flat screen tv - don't know if it is interlaced or sdtv.

[cwills]

goveRtime, for your picture quality issues, you can always try different software decoders, VMR or overlay, and see how each looks. For a software decoder, I like the Nvidia DVD Decoder, they have a 30 day trial on their site. As far as the white lines on the edges, you can try stretching your output in your config.xml file in your gbpvr directory. I think it's listed in there as overscan control with horizontal and vertical zooms and offsets. I'm say "I think" because I have a 350 and those settings don't do anything for me with my output.

Your videocard output is mostly a personal preference. Most non-HDTV's won't resolve detail over 640X480 or 800X600. I generally set my TV output based on the app I'm running. If it has a large menu that only works with a 800X600 res. without getting cut-off, I go with that. Your refresh rate will always be 60Hz on your TV, which means the maximum frames/sec you will ever need is 60fps, anything more will not be displayed. The flicker control is also a personal preference, I have mine on default. It's pretty difficult to use a non-HDTV as a monitor for reading text, such as with a web browser. That doesn't mean you can't play games, or read the text. Xbox's, PS2's and Gamecubes all have readable text on-screen, it's just larger than usual. Keeping your resolution lower, like 640X480 makes everything alot easier to read.

I've played a few games for comparison sake on multiple systems. I have a Gamecube, Xbox and the PC. I tried a few games such as Madden NFL 2004/2005, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Need For Speed Underground 1 & 2 and Star Wars Battlefront. The PC version far and away exceeds the Xbox and NGC in every instance, even at 640X480 resolutions. The difference is really incredible, and should be that way. A modern computer with good graphics card is multiple generations ahead of any modern gaming consoles. I primarily play first person shooters, and use a lapboard and wireless KB/Mouse and they all play great. Doom 3 is awesome on a TV set with surround sound. UT2004 is just as playable as at my desk with my LCD display. One thing you are going to want to keep in mind if you plan on using a stereo is computer games are not encoded in dolby digital, they are fully analog surround sound. That means hooking a fiber optic or digital coax from your PC to your stereo will not give you surround sound, only 2 channel stereo. You must run the anloag outputs from your soundcard, (front left/right, rear left/right, sub/center) to a stereo with multi-channel analog inputs. There's a thread in the General Discussion that I think Reven started about HTPC gaming, there's some good info there also. One nice thing about playing games on your TV is since a non-HDTV is a pretty low res device, you should be able to play many modern games such as Doom 3 with vsync on and still hit 60fps.

[pauly666]

You'll have real issues playing PC games on a standard definition TV--text will likely be very bad. When you play a game on your PC you probably run it at around 1024x768 resolution (if not higher), and your TV is 720x480 (before overscan), i.e. the PC monitor has over 2 times more resolution, plus you are now sitting 10 feet away instead of 2.

The fix? Buy an HDTV

If only I could get that argument past my wife...