[uncleben]

Hello, this is my first post, been lurking for a while though. Sorry if this has been covered.

I had an older ATI Radeon (??) that died and found a temporary older NVidia GEForce4 MX440 (AGP) to use. The ATI was decent but not the best so it's just as well I have to look for something new. I have a 34" Sony Wega CRT-based TV. Getting computer output on a CRT TV is a bitch and the refresh rate makes it useless to act as a PC; I wish I'd spent the money on a DLP/LCD/whatever! But Anyway, I have been using a DVI->HDMI cable and the picture is pretty good but it is a real PITA to get resolution the way I want it. Fortunately the NVidia tools that come with the drivers seem a little more friendly in tweaking to a CRT TV that needs custom rez than the ATI software was. (originally when I started trying to connect the PC to my Sony I used Powerstrip but never was very fond of it)

So on to my question. This NVidia is slow and playback of BTV video recorded from my Hauppage WinPVR-250 is horrible. Oddly enough when I playback downloaded DivX/XVid content they play pretty smooth. Maybe it's because I've got BTV set to record at the highest setting and it's too much for the older card to playback. Okay, still haven't got to my question.. haha! What do you all recommend for an AGP video card with DVI output (pref Nvidia but I'm open to suggestions) that will work great with BTV on a Sony CRT? I'm particularly interested in what you guys that are using CRT TV's are using.

If I need to spend a lot, I'd just assume put it towards a new mobo/proc/mem and PCI-express but that sure seems overkill for a DVR PC.

BTV is cool and all but I'm about to the point I just want to fork over a few more bucks a month to the cable company and get their DVR with HD and just keep the PC hooked up for playback of downloads. I just love the BTV features (smart skip!!) and of mainly the ability to copy off the captures for my own use.

thanks


PS: my system is an older AMD Athlon XP1300 with 1GB ram / 250gb SATA running WinXP Pro.