Picture quality on large widescreens.

[zhulick]

I originally wanted to build a sage system that would be able to handle multiple hd streams, but since i use cable, and have sa cable boxes this looks like somethign i may want to put off for a bit. for now, i will just feed the signal from my hd capable stb's via s-video to whatever capture cards i decide to use, and have mvp's placed throughout the house.

i know that the mvp is SD only for now. So how would my picture quality look on the widescreens. I have a 52" DLP projection, and a soon to be arriving Phillips 30" tube widescreen hdtv.

i know that there are a couple of places getting closer to a really workable cable hd solution (cablecard capable hd tuners), so i just want something to fill the gap for a year or so, while the solutions mature and come down in price.

so my question is, what would let's say csi look like when captured via s-video from a stb like sa-4200 and then played back on the 52" dlp via the mvp. is the video quality great, acceptable, or just plain poor. as an unrelated question, would the quality improve tremendously if the same capture was played back on the same tv via an dedicated pc client with a decent video card.

thanks...

[zhulick]

almost forgot...

what happens when i want to watch let's say yeshd live (yankee games). i will have my stb's hooked up through s-video which will downgrade the signal on the server capture side, then stream that same signal over to the mvp. how would the output look. would it have black bars on both the left and the right, and a set of black bars on top? would i have to use my tv to fix aspect ratio?

i assume that the cable box hooked up straight to the tv via the hdmi will blow any mvp setup away in this case, am i right, or will it at least be close?

thanks...

[JUC]

Well, I use the MVP on a 42" HD Plasma and the picture quality is great for me----yes its only SD but that's all i have now anyway. I was very surprised at how good it looked compared to when I was using a client PC. I watch CSI all the time:)

Of course if you hook up a HD cable box via HMDI that is going to blow this away--no questions. But-the MVP is a hardware decoder so its pretty dard good.

One thing--are you sure that you can output HD material via the s-video output on the cablebox? I'm not sure but I thought I have heard of some brands/companies that will just display black if HD is outputted by the S-video....no experience on this though.

JUC

[malbec]

I have an MVP hooked up to a rear projection 65" Mitsubishi. The puicture quality of the shows I watch (recorded with DVD standard quality) are very comparable to normal SD cable. The menu screen however is sub par. However, I found the menu screen to be sub-par on a standard 27" CRT TV as well with the picture quality of the shows I watch just fine.

I askd abotu this previously, and got made fun of for putting an MVP/SD hook up to a 65" rear projection TV. That's me ... the cheap dutch man waiting on a good HDTV MCP/client.

The best quality? My computer monitor.