text display on tv

[blonborg]

I just built a new pc to use in my family room. I'd planned to connect it to my TV and use it for PVR, playing DVD's and light surfing/email.

However, I can barely read the next on the Windows desktop and the icons are fuzzy.

Since my ~4.5 year old tv only supports composite video - that's the way it's connected. I know tv is no match for any of my SVGA monitors - but the text is so crummy on my tv, I can't read the text to program my AIW tuner. I increased the font size to 140, but then I can only read about 1 line of text in an email message. it's too large for the 640x480 resolution.

Will a new tv with s-video inputs help?

Current project:
1.4GHz Athlon, 32Mb AIW Radeon, 256Mb RAM, 60Gb HD, Win '98SE, DVD-Rom, aluminum case & wireless internet connection

[tjkraz]

Originally posted by blonborg:
Will a new tv with s-video inputs help?

Well, it certainly won't hurt. But the other part of the equation is your video card. Many cards now have S-video and/or RCA video output, but they don't all perform equally. I'd recommend searching the net for reviews of your particular card, and see what they have to say about the TV display performance. Hate to see you sink $500 into a new TV if the real culprit is your PC card.

Also, look for a post on these boards from PB Max. His sig has a link to his web site, where you'll find a photo of his SnapStream setup. Looks to me like he's getting pretty good results.

I just have to say; if TV out is all you want (not going to be playing anything as new as return to castle wolfenstein)

Grab a Matrox G400-TV
(Definately /not/ the 450).

I have a G400 dualhead in my media PC, and my TV is the only monitor. I have an s-video connection going, but switching to the rca 'video' cable simply makes it a little muddier..enough to notice, not enough to make a difference. I run 1024x768, 32bit with anti-flicker and text enhancement (This is supported no problem by any TV since is downgrades to NTSC out quite nicely). I have XP (with no cleartype) running on large fonts.

I can use it quite well for general surfing and doing anything else I need to with it. If there are programs that refuse to use large fonts, but use 8pt instead, you are kindof screwed either way, but the G400 has _the best_ TV out I have _ever_ seen.. not only does it _kill_ the geforce cards (And yes, I had an ATI 7500, so don't say it's just one brand) in terms of output quality, but also in the drivers.. if you have never used a matrox, you have never used tv out properly. (Other TV cards are still playing catchup, and this thing came out 2 years ago)

I paid $400 for mine when it came out, and I am still happy with it. I bet you could pick one up for under $100 canadian (or $5 usd

I know you mentioned that your TV only takes a coax cable, but it's very very easy to pick up an rca-coax convertor.. you can even cannibalize an origional nintendo if you want.

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/marv_g400/home.cfm

Only one problem with the actual G400-TV, I just looked up.. There is no driver support for video capture under XP (There is probably a workaround on this site though)

But, all the rest of the stuff works.. tv-out, etc.

And, I guess the G450-eTV is a sperate enough product to deserve it's own evaluation, so ignore me when I say don't touch it.. don't touch the regular G450.