How to get the best from an s-video tv out

[phrosyn]

At the moment with the equipment I have the best quality I can use from laptop to tv is s-video but the quality is so much poorer than the svideo out of my dvd player.

Can someone tell me is there any way to get closer to dvd player output quality from a laptop? Would the tv out profile of a better gpu make much difference? What about programs like powerstip? I'm really confused here and not sure where to start finding answers

[guns1inger]

In what way is the quality less ?

My old laptop only had -s0video. I could run it at 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 to my TV, but some may not like anything over 800 x 600. The only issue I had was due to the piss-poor graphics on the laptop (intel basic chipset), which meant that it did not have enough grunt to run both the laptop and the s-video port smoothly at the same time. It was fine for static images or normal computer work, but for video playback it produced judders. If I directed all the video to the s-video port only, it played back smoothly and looked as good as it looked on the laptop screen.

Did it match the DVD player - not quite. But then DVD players have certain circuitry built in to enhance the image, as do televisions. I have never seen a DVD on a computer screen that looked as good as it did on a TV using dedicated equipment.

[jagabo]

If your graphics chip supports "Theater Mode" try it. In theater mode whatever is playing in a media player appears full screen on the s-video port, even if the media player is windowed or even mostly off screen. ATI calls it Theater Mode, others have different names.

If you're trying to get clear desktop text run at the lowest resolution you can. Or use big fonts.