Excellent Svideo Output - Nvidia FX 5200

[sshapiro63]

Hey Folks,

I have been using various ATI cards for a couple of years for output to a standard definition TV set. The one issue with my current ATI card (Radeon 9000) is that it is not able to fill my TV screen completely with the output adjustments; always leaves a little border at the bottom.

Yesterday, I picked up an Nvidia FX 5200 based board and the Svideo output is much better than the ATI. Card is made by EVGA.Com and is fanless (quiet). The latest Nvidia drivers include a very nice adjustment feature that allows you adjust the Svideo output in fine steps to fill the screen edge to edge, or overscan if you like.

The output quality is top notch too. Much better color matching than my ATI card. About the only adjustment I had to make was to turn the saturation down from the 100% default level to about 70%.

I compared the output to my Xcard too. The Nvidia output seems just as good as the Xcard, although I have not tested it completely yet.

[JasonJoel]

Hmm.. Good to know. I was toying with replacing one of my old GeForce MX200's with something that had more tv-out adjustment capability.

I've had pretty good luck with my ATI AIW 7500 on my other machine as far as image quality, but like you I never could adjust it to fill the whole screen (always a black strip along bottom).

I might have to look into this...

Jason


Originally posted by sshapiro63
Hey Folks,

I have been using various ATI cards for a couple of years for output to a standard definition TV set. The one issue with my current ATI card (Radeon 9000) is that it is not able to fill my TV screen completely with the output adjustments; always leaves a little border at the bottom.

Yesterday, I picked up an Nvidia FX 5200 based board and the Svideo output is much better than the ATI. Card is made by EVGA.Com and is fanless (quiet). The latest Nvidia drivers include a very nice adjustment feature that allows you adjust the Svideo output in fine steps to fill the screen edge to edge, or overscan if you like.

The output quality is top notch too. Much better color matching than my ATI card. About the only adjustment I had to make was to turn the saturation down from the 100% default level to about 70%.

I compared the output to my Xcard too. The Nvidia output seems just as good as the Xcard, although I have not tested it completely yet.

[d-clouse]

Just curious, I kind of have a similar setup.

I have a Geforce 2 with s-video out and when plugged into my projection TV (s-video to s-video), I am getting a border all around the edge of the screen. This happens all the way from boot up to running SageTV. It works perfect on my 19" monitor, did you have a similar problem at boot up time? Is this an overscanning situation where I need to grab tvtool or someohter hack?

Thanks

[JasonJoel]

If you have a supported card (sounds like you do) TVTool can work MAGIC as far as resizing the tv-out picture. I highly recommend it.

If I had a better card than the MX100 I have in there, I would be using it (even though I think it is unintuitive to figure out and a pain to use at first). As it is I would rather just get a new card at this point.

So long story short, it is because of how Nvidia does their default tv-out timings and is usually fixable with TVTool if you have a supported card, don't mind having to buy a piece of software to fix it, and have the patience to figure out how to configure it properly.

Jason


Originally posted by d-clouse
Just curious, I kind of have a similar setup.

I have a Geforce 2 with s-video out and when plugged into my projection TV (s-video to s-video), I am getting a border all around the edge of the screen. This happens all the way from boot up to running SageTV. It works perfect on my 19" monitor, did you have a similar problem at boot up time? Is this an overscanning situation where I need to grab tvtool or someohter hack?

Thanks

[sshapiro63]

I don't believe TVTool has support yet for the TV Out in the 5200. The TV Out is built into the new chipset (NV34 I believe), not an external unit like in a lot of other Nvidia configurations.

You don't need TVTool anyway. The latest Nvidia drivers include the ability to scale the video output to the size needed; at least it worked fine for my setup.

The EVGA brand that I bought uses a heatsink. Some other brands use a fan so they might be noisy. I picked mine up at Best Buy for $100. You can actually get the same unit with NVDVD and a DVI adapter from Newegg.com for about $85. I think the newegg version part number for the card is:

128-A8-N306-T4 - Retail

The Best Buy unit does not have the DVI adapter or NVDVD so I might buy it from Newegg and return the Best Buy unit.

[JasonJoel]

Right, I should have been more clear. For the other person that asked (d-clouse) - he can use TVTool to improve the tv-out adjustments of his Geforce *2* based card.

The newer FX chips' TV-out has more adjustments so does not really need TVTool.

Jason


Originally posted by sshapiro63
I don't believe TVTool has support yet for the TV Out in the 5200. The TV Out is built into the new chipset (NV34 I believe), not an external unit like in a lot of other Nvidia configurations.

You don't need TVTool anyway. The latest Nvidia drivers include the ability to scale the video output to the size needed; at least it worked fine for my setup.

The EVGA brand that I bought uses a heatsink. Some other brands use a fan so they might be noisy. I picked mine up at Best Buy for $100. You can actually get the same unit with NVDVD and a DVI adapter from Newegg.com for about $85. I think the newegg version part number for the card is:

128-A8-N306-T4 - Retail

The Best Buy unit does not have the DVI adapter or NVDVD so I might buy it from Newegg and return the Best Buy unit.

[d-clouse]

I actually figured it out with a tool called NVRefresh http://www.nvrt.org/. It adds whatever resolution you want to use. With my 61" I had to go with a 720x480 @ 60hz. I am a little over the edges but it works like a champ.

Now I just need to get sound pumping through my A/V rack and the remote to tie into my Directv receiver and I am done.

Thanks for the help.

[JJarmoc]

Powerstrip is great for setting differenet resolutions too. I'm running sage at 848x540p @ 60hz on my screen. There's a little overscan, so I need to do a littell tweaking, but it's a nice picture.

I don't use svideo though.. VGA to component via the audio authority transcoder.

[Narflex]

JJarmoc,

Do you know about the ui/overscan properties in the Sage.properties file? Those are there specifically for dealing with overscan so you can shrink down the UI without Sage scaling down the video.

[Omegadsl]

Originally posted by sshapiro63
Hey Folks,

I have been using various ATI cards for a couple of years for output to a standard definition TV set. The one issue with my current ATI card (Radeon 9000) is that it is not able to fill my TV screen completely with the output adjustments; always leaves a little border at the bottom.

Yesterday, I picked up an Nvidia FX 5200 based board and the Svideo output is much better than the ATI. Card is made by EVGA.Com and is fanless (quiet). The latest Nvidia drivers include a very nice adjustment feature that allows you adjust the Svideo output in fine steps to fill the screen edge to edge, or overscan if you like.

The output quality is top notch too. Much better color matching than my ATI card. About the only adjustment I had to make was to turn the saturation down from the 100% default level to about 70%.

I compared the output to my Xcard too. The Nvidia output seems just as good as the Xcard, although I have not tested it completely yet.

I hate to ask this:

Where is the sizing adjustment located? I just bought a 5200 to check it out and I can't locate that setting. I only see the setting that moves the screen up, down, left, and right. So far I think it has higher quality tv-out than Radeon cards at least as far as composite goes, btw.

[Omegadsl]

Originally posted by Omegadsl
I hate to ask this:

Where is the sizing adjustment located? I just bought a 5200 to check it out and I can't locate that setting. I only see the setting that moves the screen up, down, left, and right. So far I think it has higher quality tv-out than Radeon cards at least as far as composite goes, btw.

Nevermind, I found it :).

[m.savazzi]

All the video I acquire with my PVR350 is shifted on the right of a 5% of the whole (when played back on my dvd)... I'd like to "put it back" to the right place.

Max

[insomniac]

Dont forget another good feature of tvtool. Tvtool > Macrovision

Of course, I would never use it... :)

I.

Originally posted by JasonJoel
Right, I should have been more clear. For the other person that asked (d-clouse) - he can use TVTool to improve the tv-out adjustments of his Geforce *2* based card.

The newer FX chips' TV-out has more adjustments so does not really need TVTool.

Jason