Geforce TV-Out - Any Good?

[ODiN 0]

I'm thinking of getting either an GF2 MX or a GF2 GTS card (Elsa Gladiac to be specific), and I was curious what you people thought of the quality of the TV-Out put in Windows 2000. First of all does it work well, and secondly is it good for watching DVDs / divx / mpeg movies? I have a G400 now, so I'm sure the quality isn't going to be AS good... but I certainly would hope that it's decent enough. Thanks in advance.

[miku 0]

Hi,

You should get the Geforce MX. It is simply great. The 3D performance is excellent, though compared to a GTS, it is 500-700 3D MARKS points low. The quality of the TV out is excellent, very smooth and well accelerated.

 

Best price, Best performance.

 

ARC

[ODiN 0]

Thanks for the reply. Which MX card are you running, and are you able to get the TwinView to work okay under Windows 2000 in all modes?

[miku 0]

I have an Asus V7100. There are no stability problems at all. Regarding the TV out. The clone mode works perfectly but there are some issues with the horizontal and vertical span, but they are sure to be fixed in some service pack of Windows 2000.

 

ARC

[GHackmann 0]

I have a CL Annhilator Pro (GeForce 1 DDR) and the TV out is just fine. DVD output quality varies from movie to movie -- The Matrix is only OK, but Princess Mononoke is astounding. Same goes for other movie formats -- some of my video clips look better than on my monitor (due to the low resolution -- less pixelation) and some are only marginal. If you're looking for consistently good DVD output, then I suggest going with a DVD decoder card, since most have a dedicated TV Out on them which provides direct output from the decoder to the TV (as opposed to decoder -> graphics card -> TV which can severely hurt quality).

 

Gaming is great on it. UT looks fantastic, especially with frame rates better than most game consoles. MAME (an arcade game emulator) is loads of fun, too.

 

The only problem that I had was with the drivers -- the CL drivers didn't work (even though they had a TV Out tab) so I had to switch to the generic nVidia ones. 800x600 quality isn't that good, either (the image is smashed and too dark, even after fiddling with the brightness), so stick with 640x480.

 

Be careful about generalizing TV out on GeForce cards, since there are two different chips used for it. Mine has a Brooktree chip, so my experiences with it should be the same with other Brooktree-based cards, but the other chip (don't remember which it is off hand) might not work as well, or it could work better.

 

It might work better if I used TV Tool, but I haven't bothered to lug a monitor into the family room to deal with it. (Apparently, while you're using TV Tool, the TV output gets corrupted, so I need both hookups to see what I'm doing.)

[TERMIN8TOR 0]

Quote:

Originally posted by GHackmann:
Be careful about generalizing TV out on GeForce cards, since there are two different chips used for it. Mine has a Brooktree chip, so my experiences with it should be the same with other Brooktree-based cards, but the other chip (don't remember which it is off hand) might not work as well, or it could work better.

The other chipset used in the Elsa Gladiac VIVO module is made by Philips. I have been searching various forums for any owners of this module to share their experiences of this upgrade, but no luck yet. Fingers crossed.........

ALSO: The VIVO only works with Win 98 (not sure which version)

[ December 31, 2000: Message edited by: TERMIN8TOR ]

[wind 0]

TV out quality greatly depends on cable and type of connection you use. Most geforce cards have the ability to output svideo directly, if you use that and your tv has a svideo connection, your image will have superior quality. Svideo is a lot better than composite.