Gettin the best picture quality on TV

[andyr354]

I am running a standard Def Sony Trinitron that is around 8 years old.

Trying to get a good picture from the PC. I have an OLD ATI AllinWonder card before. Right now I picked up an Nvidia FX5200 and am trying that. The picture is pretty poor IMHO. I know TVs are alot lower res but I can't really even read text at 800x600 and alot of apps don't fit the screen well anymore at 640x480.

Anyway the main purpose was to make a portable machine with most of my movies encoded on it as well as MP3s.

The right side of the screen curves in from bottom to top is the main anoyance right now. Would a different card help any? Is it just the old TV? Or is it just the way it is and I should stick with just taking all my DVDs along instead (sorta looks like the best option lol )

Picture cannot come close to the quality I get from my Denon 3300 player, or even most cheap walmart DVD players for that matter.

Thanks
Andy

[jagabo]

I am running a standard Def Sony Trinitron that is around 8 years old.

Trying to get a good picture from the PC. I have an OLD ATI AllinWonder card before. Right now I picked up an Nvidia FX5200 and am trying that. The picture is pretty poor IMHO. I know TVs are alot lower res but I can't really even read text at 800x600 and alot of apps don't fit the screen well anymore at 640x480.

What goes out over composite or s-video is roughly 640x480 resolution. You're 800x600 desktop is being downsized for the TV output. The s-video signal and probably your TV are also not able to deliver a high quality picture. It will never be as clear as a computer monitor.

The right side of the screen curves in from bottom to top is the main anoyance right now. Would a different card help any? Is it just the old TV?

That's a problem with your TV. Enable overscan in the graphics card's setup applet to hide the problem.

Picture cannot come close to the quality I get from my Denon 3300 player, or even most cheap walmart DVD players for that matter.

That may be an issue of the graphics card's output. Some manufacturers have poor analog video output. Some of the problem may be related to the graphics cards driver setup. I'm not familiar with nVidia's drivers these days but most cards have a "theater mode" where whatever you play in a media player shows up full screen on the TV, even if the player is playing in a window on the desktop. This mode usually gives the best output and can be as good as a set-top DVD player. I have an old Matrox G450, a new Matrox Parhelia APVE, and a cheap ATI X300 card, all of which have s-video output comparable to DVD players.