Best TV-Out? Hollywood+ What about Divx?

[Paiden]

I've been looking into Matrox G450 and various Ati cards (AIW Radeon, Radeon VIVO, AIW Rage 128 Pro).
I've also considered the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 Kyro2 as I've actually seen the TV-Out quality of it, which
was not bad at all.

I'm ONLY concerned about the TV-Out quality of the card when playing Divx encoded material. That's
also why I've ruled out the Hollywood+ card as it offers no support for Divx, or do they just mean that it doesn't support HARDWARE acceleration of Divx, can I output the desktop to the TV and play anyways?

As I've said the ONLY thing that matters is the quality of the TV-Out.

Thanks.

[Macros746]

Well,
IMHO, the Hollywood magic card has hands down the best TV-Out signal. There is a playa called Divx+ that supposedly allows you to play Divx on your TV through the card...but I haven't been able to ever get it to work so I can't comment. If all you care about is Divx, you would probably be better off going with the RAdeon AIW or a similar card (ATI is generally accepted to have the best TV-out)

Macros

[Paiden]

Then what about converting a Divx video file to some of the supported formats on the Hollywood+ ? Any major downsides of doing that? I know that as a general rule of thumb you should never recompress anything, especially Divx material, right? You say that Ati has the best TV-Out bar Hollywood+ but most ppl would say Matrox, at least from what I've heard, any thoughts?

[Macros746]

Matrox DOES have good TV output but it is an EXTREMELY old card. In my opinion it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to purposely buy an 'ancient' card. In terms of long term life span, AIW Radeon also has S-Video out which, although not that common among TVs now, will DEFINITELY give better picture than anything the Matrox has to offer. If you hold off for a month or so you will be able to get a Radeon AIW for around $100. The new cards just came out so prices on the last generation will be dropping. As to transferring Divx to other formats...it goes reasonably well into VCD but stil....better to play it as is...

Macros

[Paiden]

You're saying the Matrox G450 hasn't got S-Video out? Hmm... better look into that...

We're acctually gonna by a new tv soon here so... I always figured that you used a S-Video to SCART cable for TV-Out. Any advantages with having an acctual S-Video in on the tv?

About the Matrox card being "ancient" is no news but if you haven't figured yet I play games on a whole different setup featuring my Gainward Ti/450 "Golden Sample" with 3.8ns ram chips. I've OC'ed it to 250/550 but settled for 240/500, i.e. regular Ti500 levels. Sweet gaming rig, ahh.

Well I live in Europe, to be precise in Sweden, you know the country with the worlds largest taxes! Prices here are outrageous.

Well what about the Radeon VIVO as I definitely wont be using the TV tuner on AIW or the S/PDIF out (Already got me an Audigy), have no need for DVI out as well.

[MustangGT]

I would go with the AIW if you're a moderate gamer and you are a video techie. However, the Radeon with VIVO is not bad too, it leans more towards games but I've seen its capture and tv-out quality, they're not bad at all.