TV as a monitor

[mxer269]

Hi,
I have a few questions that I hope you all can answer.

I would like to watch the divx movies through my TV without having to convert them, and I would do this by hooking my TV up to my computer and using my tv as a computer monitor, but I have no idea how. Do you need a certain type of monitor/tv/computer to make this happen? What do I need to purchase in order to make this work? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

[Enchanter]

mxer269,

"Do you need a certain type of monitor/tv/computer to make this happen?"

Firstly, you will need a graphic card that has a TV-out port. Most will use S-video jack , though some older cards can have the Composite type (the yellow-coloured jack). Most televisions will accept Composite type of input, but not necessarily the S-video type. If your television falls under this category (or you just don't have an S-video-to-S-video cable), it is an easy matter of obtaining an S-video-to-Composite convertor.

Once you have connected the TV to your computer, you will need to configure the TV-out settings. If you are using an nVidia- or ATI-based card, install the latest version of Detonator or Catalyst drivers respectively, which will ensure that the appropriate function for TV-out is installed. The software should automatically detect the connection to the television and accordingly set things up. Follow what instructions that may appear.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

[mxer269]

great thank you. another question - ok, I have a p3 500 mhz computer. what HIGH QUALITY/HIGH PERFORMANCE video card with TV-Out would you recommend and how much does it run for?

[UncasMS]

a p3-500 might be a bit to underpowered for playback of high bitrate mpeg-4 movies.

any vga with tv-out will work.
if you donbt want to spend too much money try an old voodoo3 3000 with tv-out or a cheap nvidia mx 440 chip.
i'm not familiar with ati.

[Enchanter]

mxer269,

"I have a p3 500 mhz computer. what HIGH QUALITY/HIGH PERFORMANCE video card with TV-Out would you recommend and how much does it run for?"

At 500MHz, the system is close to being underpowered for playback of most MPEG-4 compression videos (DivX and XviD included). Hence, there is no reason for getting a high performance video card for the system since there will be bottlenecking between the card and the CPU. Any budget video card will do well enough.

I personally like the TV-out quality on my Radeon cards and seeing the large number of ATI users similarly satisfied, I can recommend you going ATI. For your system, the Radeon 7200, 7500 or 8500 (same as 9100) should provide you with all the performance your system can handle while being easy on the wallet.

[Gudzon]

thanks for this topic. i have found a lot of interesting here

[UncasMS]

lots of things have changed though

nowadays many dvd players are capable of playing avis so no need for conversion or media-player-pc