Question about TV-out.

[danrorie03]

The VIA EPIA M9000 motherboard has built in tv-out, I want to get an idea of the quality of the picture using a TV. http://www.geocities.com/danrorie03/Net_system.html for the system I am looking to build and some links. Also in general what is the qualitiy of TV-out?

 

[relaxandreflect]

lower overall resolution esp as far as words and details. for movie playback, it's pretty decent. your monitor has a lower quality resolution that your monitor.

 

[Boogak]

Generally s-video TV-out makes text pretty blurry, even at the lowest resolutions. While still readable, it's nowhere near as sharp as a monitor, even at 640x480. However it's ok for gaming or viewing movies, just don't expect to be able to do some major web surfing on your TV w/o getting a headache.

 

[danrorie03]

It also has an RCA type TV-out in addition to the s-video, would that make a difference?

 

[yipperzz]

not really, the s-video will have better video quality than the rca out and even with s-video you won't be able to really do much except for watch movies and games or presentations

 

[danrorie03]

What about if I get a good video card with TV-out, would that help?

 

[Sickpuppy]

the limitation is the resolution of the TV, unless you make your text size REALLY BIG, you wont be able to read easily.

 

[jcuadrado]

blurry text....good for movies...but thats about it....it's the tv that the bottleneck...not the video card...

 

[budgieboo]

what if the tv is a flat picture tube television? will the computer look good on it and will it work as well as a monitor would?

 

[Boobers]

You need a HDTV with a DVI input.

I currently have a 36" HDTV that has a 15-pin analog monitor hookup and I can surf the web and read text fairly easily. (Although, the max resolution and refresh is 800x600 @ 60 Hz, which is as high as a TV can go, anyway). I really like it. I'm sure a HDTV with a DVI input would be even better.

 

[HappyNic]

Tv-out is not really for reading text, but instead mainly for viewing video. Even though the TV has lower resolution, watching Divx/dvd/vcd on your TV is still a blast. In-fact when you watch Divx/svcd/vcd/dvd by tv-out it WILL look better on you TV than your monitor, in most cases the lines with be sharper.

 

[Boobers]

IMHO, the cheapest stand-alone DVD player will always look better on a TV than playing a DVD on your computer and viewing it on a TV using the computers TV-OUT.

 

[Doh!]

Originally posted by: Boobers
You need a HDTV with a DVI input.

I currently have a 36" HDTV that has a 15-pin analog monitor hookup and I can surf the web and read text fairly easily. (Although, the max resolution and refresh is 800x600 @ 60 Hz, which is as high as a TV can go, anyway). I really like it. I'm sure a HDTV with a DVI input would be even better.

A DVI input is not really necessary. My father-in-law has a LG 60" LCD Projection HDTV (I don't think this model available in the U.S. It's thicker than a PDP TV but about 1/3 of a conventional projection TV) with a regular 15-pin monitor input. I hooked up my laptop to it with a regualr monitor cable and it goes as high as 1600x1200 if I remember correctly (it might even go higher). It was as good as looking at a regular LCD monitor (I guess it had to be since it was just a giant LCD with TV functions).

 

[Boobers]

If you are using a 15-pin connection, you are using an analog connection which relys on the RAMDAC on your video card to produce an analog signal. Most late-model HDTV's have DVI ports, which is a direct digital hook-up and will produce much better results than an analog 15-pin hook-up. I don't think I've seen any HDTV's with the 15-pin connector for about two years now.