PC to TV, anyone done this??

[lherring81]

I am thinking of building a media center. But i am also going to want to surf the net and etc using this same pc. I do not want to buy an expensive tv just to do this.

I have a regular run of the mill tv and want to buy my a AIW vid card and hook up up that way. I dont have a plasma, HD, widescreen or anything special, just a regular tv. Will I have any problems??

 

[wiktorek01]

last time i tried to do things such as surf the net and normal tasks on my tv, the picture was very very very blurry.
But i only hook up my computer to my tv to watch movies. and that's fine.
There's probably some settings where you can get a perfect resolution for you tv if i'm not mistaken

 

[The_Other_One]

PC's and TV's run at TOTALLY different resolutions. TV's are interlaced, too, which is why comps look so blurry on the screen.

You won't get wonderful quality with desktop stuff or DVDs using a standard TV Out as they are not made to match the TV's resolution correctly. Some do, I know my old Geforce2 could with some tweaking from additoinal software...

Some sort of LCD/Plasma TV would probably be your best bet.

 

[wiktorek01]

when i "download" movies, like dvd rips and play em on my tv using my tv out, the picture is perfect. Looks like as if i was using my dvd player.

 

[The_Other_One]

I've not messed with my 6800's TV Out too much, but it did seem to do well. I still don't think as well as my old Geforce2, or my very old Mpact(that thing is incredible!)

Well, if your happy with your TV Out, then just find a good input card. If you plan to record things, I'd look for one that has a real-time MPEG encoder on it. Some claim they have one, but it's not hardware based. Easiest way to tell is that most hardware based ones have onboard RAM, a small heatsink on the processor, and tend to cost around $100+. Not sure what you plan to spend. I think one of Kworld's cards has hardware compression, TV-Tuner, remote, and other inputs.