Best Tv-out Card To Purchase?

[accat13]

LOL I also was getting sick of converting but didn't have the money to buy a new video card with tv out .So i bought a used Ati rage 2 dvd 8mb of ram for $10.I have the onboard video disabled ,my nvidia tnt 32 as the video card i use all the time , and when i want to watch a movie i just select the ati as the display and i watch my movie on the TV..If an ATI card plays well at 8mb a 64mb should play great... celeron 667 512 ram XP pro

[bronco]

Ive just ordered my Tv-out card

Although it wasnt on my list ive gone for a RealMagic Xcard due to some excellent
reviews and feedack.

If anyone cares to have a look at THIS link, i'd appreciate what you think.


Cheers

[Spindulik]

Originally posted by bronco@18 June 2003 - 14:05

Ohhh... thats two for the ATI Radeon 7000 64MB DDR PCI Video Card

I said ATI is good for TV out, since you are limited due to the PCI. Many other brands for PCI don't exist anymore.

Now if you had AGP, I'd recommend atleast a GeFORCE4 MMX MX 440. It costs the same as that ATI. You get 128MB of DDR instead of the 64MB. It is sooooo much better for anything. Watching movies, playing 3D games. The TV out is good as long as you tweak it. Which is easy to do, if you know how to adjust color, contrast, brightness, etc...

[gumbydancin]

I imagine the ones you listed are between $60-80, but you can just go the whole nine yards (tv wise) and get an ati all-in-wonder ve (pci) foraround $100. Try newegg.com or try pcworld.com's product finder to find the best price. You get tv out with s-video and composite and you get tv tuner and dvd or vhs to pc recording options. It performs pretty darn well for the price and features.

[Spindulik]

Originally posted by bronco@18 June 2003 - 14:05
...although they mention possible problems
occuring with onboard gfx and winXP, which i have.

Yeah. There is a slight problem! I have the ATI TV wonder capture card and I had the ATI Radeon 7000 TV-Out. In XP, they don't work together!!!! Those stupid asses! Couldn't get a clear picture in XP. I now use a GeForce4 card. Perfect reception!

[3RA1N1AC]

Originally posted by Spindulik@20 June 2003 - 10:49
Yeah. There is a slight problem! I have the ATI TV wonder capture card and I had the ATI Radeon 7000 TV-Out. In XP, they don't work together!!!! Those stupid asses! Couldn't get a clear picture in XP. I now use a GeForce4 card. Perfect reception!

not sure what problem you experienced... my TV Wonder works just fine with my Radeon 9000. in fact, most All-In-Wonder cards are essentially Radeons with a TV Wonder attached to them.

[bronco]

Originally posted by gumbydancin@20 June 2003 - 18:48
I imagine the ones you listed are between $60-80, but you can just go the whole nine yards (tv wise) and get an ati all-in-wonder ve (pci) foraround $100.  Try newegg.com or try pcworld.com's product finder to find the best price.  You get tv out with s-video and composite and you get tv tuner and dvd or vhs to pc recording options.  It performs pretty darn well for the price and features.

Thats nice, all them features are very good to have.

I may cancel my order! and get a ati all-in-wonder now.

Is this the exact name for the one your talking about>ALL-IN-WONDER® 128 PRO (pci version for me)

Bit confused about the exact one 'cause theres a few if im not mistaken.

Im in the UK as well so newegg's no good for me
Cheap UK dealers anyone?

Also would the TV-out quality be equal to the Xcard which is designed for only this purpose.

Apoligies for all these questions (gumbydancin you got alot to answer for! )


Thanks for the help, i do appreciate it

[3RA1N1AC]

what are the details of your computer? i.e. CPU model + speed, how much RAM, etc. if you have a slower computer (pentium 2, lower range pentium 3 or celeron...) you would benefit from the Xcard because it has hardware decoding of mpeg 4 (AVI files).

if your computer is more recent (one or two years old, i'd guess), a Radeon All-In-Wonder would prolly be the better choice because ATI should have more reliable driver support and easier configuration.

i haven't seen any comparisons of Xcard's tv-out quality to other cards, but i doubt there is much of a difference at all. its main selling point is hardware decoding of mpeg 4, which shouldn't be a concern for people who own recent model computers.

hardware world really should have a pinned topic about tv-out cards, because this seems to be a popular subject that's asked about at least every week.

[bronco]

Originally posted by 3RA1N1AC@21 June 2003 - 20:58
what are the details of your computer? i.e. CPU model + speed, how much RAM, etc. if you have a slower computer (pentium 2, lower range pentium 3 or celeron...) you would benefit from the Xcard because it has hardware decoding of mpeg 4 (AVI files).

if your computer is more recent (one or two years old, i'd guess), a Radeon All-In-Wonder would prolly be the better choice because ATI should have more reliable driver support and easier configuration.

i haven't seen any comparisons of Xcard's tv-out quality to other cards, but i doubt there is much of a difference at all. its main selling point is hardware decoding of mpeg 4, which shouldn't be a concern for people who own recent model computers.

hardware world really should have a pinned topic about tv-out cards, because this seems to be a popular subject that's asked about at least every week.

I agree with you about having a 'pinned topic about tv-out cards' seen a lot
of questions myself on this, but it didnt help me ( thats probably because everyone has
a AGP slot)

Anyway heres a few spec details of my comp:

Athlon xp2000+ 1668 MHz

512 sdram

Wn xp home

Should i go with the ATi Rad now??

[3RA1N1AC]

Originally posted by bronco@22 June 2003 - 04:58
Should i go with the ATi Rad now??

most definitely.

this one should do very well--
http://mirror.ati.com/products/pc/aiwve/index.html

if you can do without the video capture & tv tuning, this card (radeon 7000, also known as the "original" radeon before they renamed it) has the same picture quality for tv-out and monitor. just make sure the merchant specifies that it has tv-out because there's prolly a low-budget version floating around without all of the connections on it--
http://mirror.ati.com/products/pc/radeon70...7000/index.html


one caveat, tho-- the latest drivers for the all-in-wonder work very well with windows XP for video capturing, but the capture/television programs they bundle with it are crap. so if you want to record television shows, it's best to use a third-party program like WinDVR or PowerVCR.