VGA to TV converter

[blackdiamond]

I'm thinking of buying a VGA to TV converter and am wondering what people think of the quality of video output. Since my video card does not have an analog video out for my TV, I am thinking of going this route. I have a SD TV and will be using the converter to convert from VGA to Svideo. I hope to leave my computer at 1024x768 and still have my lcd monitor attached. The TV will just be used to view video and operate GBPVR, not as my primary computer screen. Doing a quick search, it was easy to find converters which could convert from VGA(1024x768 @60Hz) to Svideo(480i).

Any opinions on this setup? Can anyone recommend a decent converter?

Thanks in advance.

[offrotor]

I am looking at doing just that.. I have TV out on my video card, but I am looking at mounting a 5" LCD screen on the front of my custom box. I would like to have this LCD screen hooked up to my VGA out on my video card. I have looked on E-bay and such, lil' too much $ for my liking. If there is a better way to do this for less $ that would be cool.

[JonnyCam]

I have used one of these with my onboard video until I upgraded the PC.

It worked well - and was quite good getting box composite & s-video out at the same time. I think the monitor pass through was not quite as good as it should have been - I think it's passed through after the signal has passed through the filters in the box - because a direct connection to the VGA looks brighter than the pass-through.

Most of these boxes also have RGB out - so it can be connected (using the right cable) to a scart connection on TV for a better quality output.

They shouldnt cost more than $50 US I guess (retail)

[malgernon]

Hi,

Would anyone like to hazard a guess on whether this is likely to offer an improvement on my epia-m10000's onboard TV-Out (via S-Video)?

To elucidate, the TV picture from DVDs, DivX, XViD etc is (in my view anyway) *great* using the epia-M's onboard TV-Out.

Live TV is good, but not as sharp as cable-straight-to-TV, and seems slightly flickery during fast movement. This is what I'm hoping to improve. The Epia's single PCI slot is taken by my PVR150 card so I'm hoping this could be a substitute for a graphics card, which I'd only want for its TV out.

But if its not going to improve my broadcast TV picture then I'll probably pass.

Cheers,

Malgernon

[wtg]

Hi,
Live TV is good, but not as sharp as cable-straight-to-TV, and seems slightly flickery during fast movement. This is what I'm hoping to improve.

Have you looked at the direct.ini file in the gbpvr directory? This file contains the various MPG setting for high, medium and low recording quality, as well as a separate section for Live TV. The Live TV settings are quite a bit lower than High quality, and if you replace them with the High quality settings you should see an improvement.

Personally I think the Live TV settings should be set to the High settings by default. I suspect a lot of people see a lower quality picture in gbpvr's Live TV and think it's some fault of GB-PVR and don't realize it's just these settings that need to be improved.

[Ted the Penguin]

agreed, if you think picture quality is fine when watching everything else but live TV, then your problem lies in your live TV settings, not the path the video takes to the TV.

[malgernon]

Cheers for the advice both. I'll try modifying the live TV settings.
Regards,
Malgernon