PC's with TV out - crap?

2manyconsoles

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Some PC's have a s-video/composite out so you can hook up to a TV - are these any good? I heard there is a fixed resolution which is pretty poor @ 520X something or other.

Anyone got one and used it for anything other than watching DVD's

thanks
 
I have a Hercules Prophet 2 GeForce2 MX card (dual display) with TV out. It's awful!!!

The picture on the TV has a 1/2" black border all the way around. If you want to watch DVD's on a TV then avoid this card.

I'm not sure if all cards do this, it's the only TV-Out card I have owned.
 
I already have a stand-alone DVD - I'm just interested in how general windows usage fairs with these cards - I've looked around and been to the manufacturers site but there is no mention of what sort of resolution you can get through a TV.
 
A computer screen displayed on a TV is always going to be crap.

A TV is a low-res interlaced display with a low refresh rate. They can't compete with a high-res, progressive scan monitor.

I have a Pro-V (converts S-Video to XGA) connected to my 17" monitor (projector broken) to watch TV the picture is amazing.
 
hmm, resolution? I think my card can do 800x600 and 640x480 but both look awful.
 
thanks for the response - thats what I was a afraid of - I want a PC but I have no room for a monitor - TFT is about £300
 
many £'s though for less speed. Unless there is a decent priced TFT hiding out there somewhere its either plugging it into the TV or using the old 14 inch Olivetti monitor I have sitting around

I just want it for broadband (lots of downloading) and a few games (not the latest 3d stuff)
 
Rather than try to output a pc to a tv set, why not buy a pc and monitor, and add a tv card so you can watch tv on the monitor. Picture quality of tv programmes is almost the same as on a tv (some degradation due to pc monitors being non-interlaced wheres tvs are interlaced) and the pic quality for general windows use will be much better.
 
Hmm. Too high a resolution from your TV card can look bad on a TV due to the TV not having enough resolution to display things correctly (e.g. Text will look blurry). Of course you get more real estate with a higher resolution so it's kind of a trade-off.

If quality of output is important (but the speed of the card isn't), consider a Matrox G series card for your pc with dual-head output (e.g. G200, G400). You could probably pick one up real cheap now and the quality is definitely a whole lot better than some of the newer cards. Independent resolutions for the twin outputs helps things tremendously... In fact, I still a G400 for my server.
 
You could create a custom resolution but the text would have to be huge.

It would look like a Fisher-Price computer and you would be scrolling all the time.

Without scaling, I think 640x480 is the nearest to a TV's resolution.
 

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