Best video card?

[ggee]

So apparently, looking throught the forums, it seems that using just any video card with TV out is not good enough. I have an MSI GForce4 MX440. The video on the TV is not the greatest.

So what is the criteria? What is the minimum?

Good video out?
Good VMR9 support?

So I ask, what is the recommended video card to make BGPVR look the best?

Thanks,
Greg

[daphatty]

Assuming you are using a decent MPEG2 encoder, I'd recommend an nVidia 6x00 series with no less than 4x AGP. I use an nVidia 6200 and it is simply superior.

[votum76]

I've had good luck with a $25 card I got from newegg.com

ati radeon 7000 32 mb.

once I
turned off the deinterlacer in misc options
set svideo output quality to more
set theater mode (overly) mode to the same on both monitors.

I use it with a haupague pvr-150 tv card and the output is great.
same as from the comcast box.

divx plays well as well.

note that I have a non- hdtv setup. this card might not handle that.

[spyork]

My Geforce MX400 sucked when it came to the TV-out. I switched to the decoder output on the PVR350 capture card and everything looked beautiful. Since the output on the capture card was far from stable I have since switched to just using the MediaMVP and plan on putting the computer in a closet.

[nkh]

I just got a Radeon 9250 (pci), and it is a lot better than the S3 chip set that's buildin in my motherboard (via m10000), it's better than my old GeForce4 MX440 (also pci), but it isn't as good as the tv-out on my PVR-350 (but that's unfortunately useless 'cos it locks up the computer if its on for long periods of time..).

I use WMR9 on the Radeon card and that's also what I used on the nVida card, I used overlay with the S3 on my motherboard.

[nitrogen_widget]

I'm using an fx5200 with s-video out & while the picture is pretty good I noticed I had component in on my tv & ordered a sapphire radeon 9550 & one of those DVI to Component adaptors to see how that works out.
Even though its a standard definition TV I think I should be able to pull a better picture.

[Snarky]

I've been reading up on the forums, and seen a lot of people praise the Matrox G550 as the best TV-out quality you can get. However, I have two concerns.

First, from the pictures on the Matrox website, it doesn't look like the G550 actually has S-Video out. Instead, it lists under Hardware Included: "Retail version only: TV-output adapter cable (HD-15 to composite video and S-video)." Is that how you get TV-out on this card? Is the quality really any good through an adapter cable?

Second, many of the computers I'm looking at as a basis for this system have moved away from AGP to PCIe slots for the graphics cards. The Matrox cards seem to support AGP almost exclusively, with one exception. Is the PCIe version of the card as good as the AGP version?

Also, some people have indicated that other Matrox cards do TV-out just as well as the G550. Which cards does this apply to?

Finally, if I were to buy a non-Matrox card, what should I choose? And how would the quality compare?

[fusionrx]

I use a Geforce4Ti4600. But that being said I'm looking at it on my Computer monitor. When I get to setting it up on the HDTV that I have, I'll connect via DVI cable (crosses fingers that it works).

[wannabepvr]

I have found a FX5200 (Gigabyte) to be adequate using the RCA output. They are available in half height which suits my case and without fan which helps with noise (although it gets pretty warm) All this for AUD $50.

Remember in reality standard definition TV resolution is very low (625 lines?) compared with monitors and the refresh rate is usually only 50Hz. How much grunt do really you need?