Good Video Card for TV-Out?

O

Orinthical

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2004
Messages
1,635
Howdy folks,

Well I know the basic answer to this is that most all video cards are the same as far as S-Video Out goes and there are generally only slight variances between all of the different models and generations.

That being said, I would like to know your success/horror stories with different cards if you don't mind. Please list resolution and TV used as well if you would.

Right now I am using an ATI Radeon 9600pro All-In-Wonder with S-Video setup as a secondary monitor. It's sufficient for now but only because I have a linux box on a KVM with it in the corner away from my Home theatre system. With my current TV, running S-Video as the primary video out would be horrifying.

Essentially, I am trying to find the best recommended card out there specifically for TV-Out --- okay, so preferably with a little bit of meat to it as well such as an FX52/5600.

Right now I will probably continue to use this system in the above mentioned manner, until I get my HD projector or HDTV.... then (god willing) I'll be using DVI, so this card must also have good DVI connectivity.

Thanks in advance for the recommendations.
 
I'm using a 9600 non pro that I bought in the FS/FT forum for $50 shipped. Has DVI, vga, and s-video. I'm using a svideo->rca adapter and its run through a switch box to the tv and it still looks pretty good. When playing a dvd I can't tell any difference between it and my set top player at all (have yet to add any filters or other image enhancing options).

In general they say to stay far, far, far away from the geforce2 series card since the gpu doesn't have tv encoding built in and a wide variety (and quality) of convertors were used. A good low end card would be a geforce4 mx440/460, wich is supposed to have excellent tv output, or a newer directx9 compatible ati card such as a 9600/9700/9800/etc. Not sure of anything higher end on the nvidia camp, due to both noise and heat I wouldn't go that route.
 
Some questions: How much are willing to pay? Do you want to use VMR9 for live TV and Video playback?

General rule of thumb:
NV: Stay away from anything below a GF4 series, with the GF2 and 3 NV let manufactures decide if they wanted to add TV-out so many of them cheaped out on it. You have something of a 50/50 chance at getting one of those cards with good TV-out.

The GF4 Series is pretty good quality though since NV intergrated the TV encoder onto the GPU.

The FX cards have an improved encoder (from the 5200-5950) that is great. NV also seems to have better S-Video quality but that is pretty subjective.

ATI: Stay away from anything with an "SE or Lite" in the title, they all pretty much have crappy PQ over S-Video mostly. Some don't have trouble using them over DVI though.

Anything from a 7x00 series to the latest will be good to use. ATi redesigned their TV-out starting with the 9000 series so even though a 9000 is pretty much a revised 8500 performance wise, the 9000 has better TV-out.

Alot of people make the mistake of say "I don't game so I won't need anything like a 9600 XT," Thats a pretty uninformed position. Once you start appling filters, VMR, hardware acceleration (deinterlacing is different between a 9600 XT and a 9800 XT since the 9800XT has more GPU "musle") and other things you'll see that even a 9800 Pro would have been a better choice over a cheap 9200.

A 9600NP/ 5700NP/ 9700 Pro is a good all-around choice with a 9800 Pro a great deal (think of the longer upgrade times for HTPCs and that the 9800 can handle WinHD playback) at under $200.

You mentioned that your going with an HDTV soon which brings other complexities. ATi has the HD adapter (doesn't work with all cards though) but you'll have to use Powerstrip (hopefully your TV isn't so picky about the timings so that you could just use the adapter) NV doesn't have anything like the adapter. Or you could pick up an HD transcoder which is video card neutral (I'd recommend that) but you'll still be using Powerstrip.

Good Luck. :)

BTW I'm stuck with a GF2 and Divx playback hovers around 40% CPU usage, if I move to a more current card I'll see that number drop lower (around 25-30) which would make a world of difference since I post process all video with FFDShow. I'm waiting for Christmas when the 6600 cards will be released in AGP (hopefully a GT). CPU usage with them hovers around 10-15%, DVDs and Mpeg2 are under 10%. Those are what matter most to me. :)
 
If you ever wanna try out a frontend that runs on linux, like Freevo or MythTV, stay away from ATI cards. I've tried running linux on both a Radeon 8500 and a 9700. The 9700 wouldn't do tv-out at a different resolution than the monitor, and the 8500 wouldn't do tv-out at all (both using the latest ATi fglrx drivers).

I got an FX5200 for my htpc, and its been running mythtv well for a few weeks.
 
So my move from a burnt ATI 9600XT to a 5900XT is okay?

Trying to get an RMA going for the ATI, if all works out, should I keep the 9600XT or the 5900XT?
 
I'd buy it off of your for $60. ;) LOL
I'd say try out the 5900 first and then go by which experience was better for you.
 
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