S-video to standard TV connection -- can text be made readable?

[gumbygum]

I travel all the time, and had the idea that if I could connect a laptop to a TV in a hotel room and get decent quality text on the TV screen, then I could buy a laptop with a smaller display and lighter weight, easier to carry. But my internet research all seems to indicate that, with an S-video connection, text is very poor quality.

But I am wondering if that needs to be the case. If I have a Word document and make the text very big, perhaps 25 point, and put it in a sans-serif typeface like Arial, will the text be easily readable on the standard TV?

I notice that titles on news programs, stock tickers on Bloomberg and the like, are quite easy to read on a standard TV. Can I get that same text quality when converting from a laptop's S-Video port to a standard TV? I would be very happy with that kind of quality. Would making the text big and selecting the right typeface give me that same text quality?

I am basing my forthcoming laptop purchase on this question. I know that i can get excellent text quality if I were to connect to a High Definition TV with either the VGA port or HDMI, but the hotels that I stay in don't have High Definition TVs, they have standard TVs and probably will continue to have them for the next few years.

Another complication is that S-Video outputs are practically impossible to find on new laptops today. They have been phased out in favor of HDMI, which is useless to me. But I do know of a few laptops I can buy that still have the S-Video port.

Finally...I would be using an S-Video to RCA cable, not S-Video to S-Video, because very few TVs I find in hotel rooms even have S-Video inputs, but they all have RCA inputs.

I also know that if I buy a laptop without an S-video port, I can still get a VGA to S-Video converter box. But that would mean another thing to carry when I travel, and a bunch of heavy cables as well.

I hope somebody can steer me in the right direction. Unfortunately, I can't get a demo of S-Video to TV before purchase.

Thanks for any help.

[edDV]

S-Video for text is roughly equivalent to 524x480i resolution so requires large sans serif typefaces as you have found. Early DOS or even Mac computers were limited to 40 to 80 characters per line due to monitor limitations. A composite TV is less sharp than CGA but supports more colors.

Why do you need to use the TV as a monitor? Why not use the laptop screen? Even a small screen will be better for text.

[jagabo]

Yes, you can use large fonts and s-video to make text readable. But the big text means you will have less of it on screen at any one time. Other windows elements (desktop, dialog boxes, etc) are harder to control. For example some dialog boxes scale the location of buttons based on the text size but don't resize the dialog box. You will end up with buttons below the bottom of the dialog box that can't be seen. Or they may scale the dialog box along with the text and the buttons be withing the dialog box but you can't move the dialog box high enough to see the bottom of it.

[edDV]

All true. The workaround is to use old keyboard controlled word processors like DOS based WordPerfect or VolksWriter but why go there?

[gumbygum]

Okay, thanks everyone. One thing I still don't know -- will the text (large and sans-serif) be of equal quality to movie subtitle text or news show title text?

Actually, since I posted the original question I found an irresistible bargain last night and bought a laptop with 14 inch monitor, which is okay for reading. I was thinking that if I could read the text on the TV, I might be able to buy a 12 inch laptop or even a netbook, which would be easier to carry. But now the deed is done.

This laptop doesn't have an S-Video port. I am thinking of buying a $30 VGA-S-video-RCA converter box ("Ultimate 2000 AX", which has very good reviews on the internet) mostly for watching MPEG-1 videos on the TV. Would these videos display well on a standard TV?

Thanks again.

[edDV]

It would be OK for VCD (MPeg1).

Broadcast or movie typefaces are variations of sans serif Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma or similar.