Somewhat general questions on PQ on tv-out

[MillerTyme]

Im running a dedicated sage box, tv-out s-video --> composite
specs: athlon 64 3200, 1 gig ram, 160gb hdd, pvr150mce, onboard audio, gigabte gf6200 for tv-out
im wondering a few things, my overall pq is decent, its definately watchable, however it is noticeably worse than live tv (if you switch back and forth) and worse than my tivo in the other room. Most of the time it does not bother me too much but when i see screenshots of other peoples setups i get envious. Unfortunately it is tough for me to tell if the general lack of sharpness or clarity is coming from my tv-out connection or the tv-tuner card. Now on to some questions, my card has hd-composite out, if i plug that into a hdtv will i notice an improved pq and in a few hd-related questions
how well do the hd-tv tuner cards work at this time?

how easy is it/how well would it work to get my remote/sage to play nicely w/my digitabl cable box (necesarry for hd)

and lastly since the main selling point of hd is the amazing pq does running it through the tv-tuner/tv-out detract from that?

i have been considering taking the plunge on an hdtv for a while now and this might speed me up
other questions i had on my current setup, is there any way to get tv-out on a sdtv to look as good as either livetv or have anything like the menu sharpness or clarity it would have if displayed on a monitor?
and finally along those lines is there any tv i could get that i could plug my computer into and have it act as a big monitor (ie preserving the clarity and sharpness of a pc-monitor connection)

as im sure you can see i do not have a great deal of knowledge in regards to signal formats and connections etc, any help you could shed would be appreciated. I am not unhappy w/the sage software in this respect. Thanks again

[blade]

Originally Posted by MillerTyme

Now on to some questions, my card has hd-composite out, if i plug that into a hdtv will i notice an improved pq and in a few hd-related questions
how well do the hd-tv tuner cards work at this time?

I think you mean component out. Going from S-video or composite to component on a HDTV is a significant improvement in PQ.

HD tuner cards will only work with OTA signals. They won't be able to tune HD channels from your cable company. At least not in Sage. They can only tune HD channels from cable when using the software packaged with the cards. Even then they can only tune the channels that aren't encrypted, which will be only the local stations.

how easy is it/how well would it work to get my remote/sage to play nicely w/my digitabl cable box (necesarry for hd)

The only way to get HD from your cable box to the PC would be through firewire. There are threads on how to do this.

i have been considering taking the plunge on an hdtv for a while now and this might speed me up

I only have SD content and it looks pretty good on my HD set. I don't have a SD set for comparision, but I would expect component out to a HD set would surpass composite to a SD set even when dealing with SD content.

other questions i had on my current setup, is there any way to get tv-out on a sdtv to look as good as either livetv or have anything like the menu sharpness or clarity it would have if displayed on a monitor? and finally along those lines is there any tv i could get that i could plug my computer into and have it act as a big monitor (ie preserving the clarity and sharpness of a pc-monitor connection)

It is possible to use certain TVs as computer monitors. I'm sure someone can give you the full run down.

[GbrNole]

personally i'd connect to your tv using the dvi cable i'm just not a big fan of the component breakout cables.

you then have the choice of either living with overscan or dealing reducing it through the nvidia utility. personally i just left it.

[blade]

Originally Posted by GbrNole

personally i'd connect to your tv using the dvi cable i'm just not a big fan of the component breakout cables.

you then have the choice of either living with overscan or dealing reducing it through the nvidia utility. personally i just left it.

I started out using component, but am using DVI now. I couldn't really tell much difference between the two. At one time component was broken in the Nvidia drivers. I have no idea if it works or not with the current drivers.

I reduced overscan so that the desktop fits perfectly in the screen.

[MillerTyme]

i was reading some more and found out my tweak tool settings werent saving in the general screen so i went and did them by encoder, that helped somewhat. I am at this point generally satisfied with the PQ on tv and recordings. Oddly i get terrible flicker and bad PQ on the sage menus. I have the flicker filter almost all the way up (and i have tried almost every setting in between) and i cannot get rid of it. It seems worse in the bottom left 1/4 of the screen. It is also real bad on certain shapes or colors on recordings. Is there anything i can do to improve this? I am running at 1024x768 btw on a SDTV, i tried to add 720x480 but it would not let me. Is it possible a diff s-video cord would help me? I am thinking about returning this card to newegg for a 6600 mostly b/c this card said it had rca out and it doesnt and im thinking running s-video-->rca cant be helping the PQ.

thanks for the feedback


this is weirdm ive tried everything and i cannot for the life of me get my windows to want to display 720x480, im wondering if there is a way to force it, as im thinking it might help w/the pq/flicker/ar

[blade]

The 6600 has the same connectors as the 6200. If you're using the dongle that came with the card and have composite (what you're calling RCA) selected in the driver then it's doing composite. The S-video jack on the back of the card is just the type of connector used. The card can output S-video, composite, and component from that connection. If it was a regular S-video connection it wouldn't be capable of doing that.

What do you mean by flicker filter? I haven't run across that setting.

[MillerTyme]

flicker filter is in device adjustments
more strangeness, when i switch to nvidia new control panel (from classic) i can now set 720x540 which is allright but i am now "scrolling" the display up and down, which is obv not good lol, at that point i was beter off at 1024. I had it set up before where i just made it so it filled the whole screen, cutting off like the bottom 1/2 of the start menu and some parts on the top and other sides then manually adjusted w/sage overscan, which worked fine.
My dongle thing tho has s-video out, and then hd-tv out, the blue/red/green. If i plug my rca cable into the blue one i get picture that looks good, but no color unfortunately. Also strangely when i go to signal in nvidia control panel it says M/NSTC, if i pick 480i sdtv it goes to no color (do i not have a 480i sdtv? isnt that a "normal" tv?). So i have it running from dongle's s-vid to a small attachment which i then plug my rca cable into

thanks again

update - decided to mess w/the dongle thing a little, i disconnected the s-vid adapter and plugged the rca cable into the green slot and surprisingly it worked, however the PQ was pretty poor, but i did have color etc...Next i tried plugging it into the blue one and it worked again, same as before though, no color. I dont know why but the picture looks sharp and great plugged into here, theres just no color lol. Its not software related b/c i have color if i unplug it and plug it into the s-vid adapter, but im wondering if i get a diff card w/rca out if i would be able to get this clarity (w/color lol). So right now im kind of stuck i guess, the nvidia control panel makes things so much harder b/c there are a lot of different things which change b/w classic and the new one. BTW FWIW i do get color during boot w/this output, which is kind of weird to me.

thanks

[blade]

Do you not have S-video on your TV? It's better than composite anyway. As for the color thing it sounds like you're trying to use the component output as composite which isn't going to work.

The dongle that came with my card has S-video, composite (yellow RCA jack), and component (green, blue, red). If your dongle is the same you should be using the yellow one. The others are for component not composite.

[MillerTyme]

right, bellieve it or not lol i actually somewhat understand the different outputs, i just keep getting the words mixed up. No unfortunately the card does not have yellow plug output (ill stick to colors). When i had to get a new mobo, no AGP slot, bought pci-e card. I decided to do the simplest thing, im just gonna send the card back to newegg (as they incorrectly listed yellow plug tv-out) and get one that i can clearly see in the picture has s-video/hdtv/yellow. I am fairly confident this will work. And no i have no s-video port on my tv or i would have just used that probably. For some reason im sure makes technical sense, the s-video signal converted into yellow output just was not giving me as crisp a picture as i should be getting (with much more flickering, mostly evident on the white text on blue BG of sageMC)

thanks for everything, ill update this once i pop my new card in. BTW i am getting a 6600 this time just for the reason as it is on sale ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133154 )

[MattJackson86]

Originally Posted by GbrNole

personally i'd connect to your tv using the dvi cable i'm just not a big fan of the component breakout cables.

you then have the choice of either living with overscan or dealing reducing it through the nvidia utility. personally i just left it.

I have a question about overscan. I am currently using component with overscan correction via nvida settings. If i dont fix overscan I can then leave it at true 1280x720, I still have to fix in in sagetv. Therefor what is the difference between fixing it in sage and nvidias settings? Any quality difference?