Re: Please review my proposed Shuttle Media Center PC spec

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: Tony Houghton (this.address.is.fake_at_realh.co.uk)
Date: 11/24/04 

Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:26:12 +0000 (UTC)

In <co2amr$913$1$8302bc10@news.demon.co.uk>,
Stephen Neal <stephen.neal@nospam.as-directed.com> wrote:

>
> "Tiny Tim" <_tim_dodd@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:41a4a907$0$65160$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...
> [snip]
>
>> The box will be feeding a PAL widescreen TV through s-video (or possibly a
>> VGA-RGB converter lead). Given that, would I gain any advantage by getting
>> a higher spec card or by choosing a budget ATI rather than nVidia? If my
>> needs change I can always upgrade memory and video in the future but right
>> now I need to keep the price down. I figure the rest of the components
>> should last me a good while to come.
>
> As per the other thread we are both contributing to - AIUI nVidia cards
> don't support a simple VGA->SCART video cable in the same way that ATIs do.
> Think the ATIs are the only ones that happily generate composite syncs (as
> required for SCART) and an interlaced video output (as required for normal
> TVs) on their VGA outputs.

> Both nVidia and ATI cards will happily generate a TV-out - but this is not
> RGB and is a processed version (rather than a clean version) of the Windows
> desktop. (It is scaled and flicker fixed)

Also consider a Matrox. They support composite sync too and the S-Video
TV-out is allegedly much better than Nvidia or ATI.

> As I have yet to see an ATI actually running RGB into a TV and displaying
> video I have no idea if the quality is better or worse - though others say
> it is better. Until I see how it copes with interlace I can't really
> comment further.

IME with the ATI and Voodoo 3, the interlacing makes the dekstop quite
unpleasant, but not impossible, to use. It's fine for DivX, with RGB
giving considerably more vivid colours than S-Video. For Tiny Tim the
big question is whether his TV card records interlaced or not and/or
whether MCE supports software deinterlacing. Matrox cards can sync
interlaced MPEG to the TV-out, otherwise if you're using RGB or
otherwise displaying PAL without hardware scaling etc, you'll need
software deinterlacing. The results should look OK [1] with a CPU as
fast as an A64; my 1.2GHz Celeron was just about unable to keep up, or
completely overwhelmed, depending on what software I used.

[1] I find it makes things look somehow slightly soft and unrealistic,
but it isn't distracting. 

-- 
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