Tim, Kramer or anyone else

[MrCoopz]

I have decided to Run most of my stuff through my PC. So my question is how do i do it?

I wanna run Sky Digital thru it but i have no clue how to do it.
I have a Geforce 3ti 200 with TV out. So what leads do i need, what specials boxes do i need and what configuration do i need?

cheers

[lynx]

HCPC my be more appropriate than pj forum. Moooooving.

[Timh]

Hi Mrcoopz

First off you will need a TV card, the Pinnacle Rave tv card is cheap and cheerful IMHO but it will get you started, if you have the dosh, go for a more up market one, which one I don't know, but make sure the one you go for has s-video in, this you can then connect your sky box via s-video.
You will then need Dscaler (free software) which improves the picture quality and de-interlaces it.
you will then need Powerstrip (free software) to set the resolution of your PC to match your projector.
the settings for the AE100 can be found on this site, just do a quick search for powerstrip.
Check out the thread at the top of HCPC section, there are links for Dscaler and powerstrip.

This should get you started.

rave tv card is available for £28 + P&P from here

You will also need an S-video lead from sky to pc
And a VGA cable from pc to AE100.

[MrCoopz]

Tim my Geforce has S-video in how do i work it with that?

[Jeff]

I would ignore the svideo in on the Geforce, it wont work with DScaler anyway. The Rave is a good capture card to start with, I would go for that.

[MrCoopz]

what about games and stuff??

is the Rave good for games

and what about the Geforce 4 i was thinking about buying in the other thread would this be suitable

[pack man]

Are you thinking the rave card is a games card? Its just a card for taking the output from your sat box or anything with a video output into your PC.

So you will have TWO cards in your PC. The rave card if you get one for all your TV stuff and your Geforce 3ti 200 to play games with.

[MrCoopz]

Sorry to be a pain but is there a more expensive card that can play decent games and i can use Sky with???

and is it worth me buying a tv card, is the picture that much better this way than my S-vid to ProV??

[Timh]

If you want to play games from your pc to your projector you will only need powerstrip to set the resolution to match the projector, I tried Medal of Honour, it looked awesome, a bit scary really.
If you want to keep it simple stick to the ProV, thats if it offers 16:9, I don't think it does though as its resolution is 1024x768 which is 4:3.
I have just switched back to s-video to my projector for a while, as it was doing my head in swapping my VGA cable all the time, the image is no where near as good, but I no longer get horizontal banding which I suffered when using Dscaler and the rave card, i think the problem was with the poor screening on the rave card.

I am using an old Gforce2 and it looks great for games and dvd playback, so your Gforce3 should look even better.

[MrCoopz]

Tim i sent u a PM but i dont know how to use it so it probebly didnt work.

All i asked was, when my PC is playing on the PJ, how do i set powerstrip to play games and what resolution do i need to get the most out of my games??

and u say that the Rave card poor screening is there any other cheap and decent cards out there??

[Timh]

You have PM

Best res would have to be 1024x768 60hz, wide480 will not be available ingame.