new to this

[Cobal]

Hello all.

I am new to this and i´m trying to decide how to watch movies on the TV by the PC.

Question 1 Is it possible to whatch AVI movies on the Tv using a graphic card with video out? Is the picture comparable with the one one the pc except the tv´s resolution?

Question 2 I have tried to convert AVI files to mpeg using Tempgne. AVI movies with good quality but the picture seems to be worse when it is converted to a Mpeg1. Is it so or is it possible to get good quality picture after a avi to mpeg convertion. The source AVi is 640 * 480 and i have tried to convert to different mpeg resolutions.

I´m not asking to get a detailed answer as i understand that it might be very difficult to answer this here, but i just want to know if im wasteing my time by this. I think VCD quality is to bad and if thats the best i can get on a tv then this is out of the window.

I would be very thankfull for any answer.

regards
Cobal

[Ricardo]

question 1 - Yes it is possible,.. but you end up with a black border as the TV out normally doesn't fill the screen completely. Quality is as you stated, though you may have to do something about reducing noise produced by PC.

question 2 - The picture quality doesn't tend to be as good as a raw AVI file as it is a lossy for of compression. It's a trade off between file size and quality so after a little trial and error you can get respectable results with minimal file size.

I have seen some very good quality VCD's, though you need to start from a high quality source, and lots of fast movement isn't always perfect when the macro blocks start to come in.

You could try converting to SVCD (which is Mpeg2 at higher resolution), though you'll need something like WinDVD or PowerDVD to play them. The quality of SVCD's are really very good.

Hope this has helped.