Mailing List Archive

>
>
> Anyone out there with a
>configuration that offers good TV-out quality and good performance?
>
>
>
I have an asus A7N266-VM that I'm happy with. I use an external vga -->
tv converter, which is very nice too.

Some time in June, someone asked:

>> Anyone out there with a
>> configuration that offers good TV-out quality and good performance?

And Cedar responded:

> I have an asus A7N266-VM that I'm happy with. I use an external vga -->
> tv converter, which is very nice too.

Then Jarod chimed in and said:

My GeForce 4 Ti 4400 (purchased from a local shop for $130 or so, I
think) has S-Video out, which results in a very crisp picture on my
HDTV. And GF4Ti definitely has good performance as an attribute (okay,
it's overkill :).

nVidia's drivers offer quite a bit of control over the picture they
output to TV. You can push multiple resolutions, set refresh rates, and
overscan.

ATI also has a rather nice DVI to component video adapter for their
Radeons you can purchase, if you have an HDTV that can accept component
video input.

-jcw

Thanks for all of the input. Sounds like nVidia may be the way to go for
video. Any other suggestions?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dwight Hubbard" <dhubbard@dwightandamy.com>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users@snowman.net>; "Randy S.
Hunsaker" <hunsra@attbi.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Recommendations?


> The drivers for the ATI radeon cards don't allow adjustments for overscan
so
> you will probably have black borders around the image if you use it.
Also,
> MythTV requires XV support which requires the ATI Gatos abandonded devel
> drivers which are a pain to set up.
>
> On Tuesday 10 June 2003 16:51, Randy S. Hunsaker wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm new to MythTV and I'm about to start building a system to support
it.
> > Can anyone suggest motherboard and video card choices? I'm thinking
about
> > an ATI 9000 w/TV-out for the video card and an ASUS motherboard with
> > integrated audio and LAN. I've already got an 80-gig HD and some RAM,
as
> > well as a Hauppauge WinTV dbx-Stereo model 401. Anyone out there with a
> > configuration that offers good TV-out quality and good performance?

Randy S. Hunsaker wrote:

>Thanks for all of the input. Sounds like nVidia may be the way to go for
>video. Any other suggestions?
>
>
I'm watching my "Dark City" DVD right now, running on my P3/900mhz
through and Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 card to my TV over SVideo. The
picture is even better than my DVD player! Needless to say tomorrow I'm
probably going to completely phase my DVD player out of my setup. No
point in using it now. I have nothing but good things to say about the
Nvidia card so far.

Now if only I could get the WinTV card to grab things in as good quality
as the computer can play them... :)

Bryan

Bryan:

Does your Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 have a built on fan?
--


Bryan Murphy said:
> Randy S. Hunsaker wrote:
>
>>Thanks for all of the input. Sounds like nVidia may be the way to go for
>>video. Any other suggestions?
>>
>>
> I'm watching my "Dark City" DVD right now, running on my P3/900mhz
> through and Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 card to my TV over SVideo. The
> picture is even better than my DVD player! Needless to say tomorrow I'm
> probably going to completely phase my DVD player out of my setup. No
> point in using it now. I have nothing but good things to say about the
> Nvidia card so far.
>
> Now if only I could get the WinTV card to grab things in as good quality
> as the computer can play them... :)
>
> Bryan
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

> Bryan Murphy said:
> > I'm watching my "Dark City" DVD right now, running on my P3/900mhz
> > through and Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 card to my TV over SVideo. The
> > picture is even better than my DVD player! Needless to say tomorrow I'm
> > probably going to completely phase my DVD player out of my setup. No
> > point in using it now. I have nothing but good things to say about the
> > Nvidia card so far.

Would you mind sharing your XF86Config. I have this card as well.

Thanks,
Larry

> As I said before, using mplayer to play a DVD looks fantastic over
> svideo now. The mpegs I capture with my WinTV PVR 250 leave a little to
> be desired though. Right now it's good enough for recording shows I
> know I'm going to miss, but I don't really want to use it for live tv yet.

Have you changed the resolution that your PVR-250 is using to capture?
The quality of my PVR-250 is just about as good as regular cable.

What resolution are you capturing the Live stream with?

Matt wrote:

>Bryan:
>
>Does your Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 have a built on fan?
>
>
No it doesn't. I've got a GeForce 4 4600 in my other machine that has a
HUGE fan on it, but not this one. So far I haven't had any problems,
I've been streaming video for about 36 hours straight now at 30% CPU
usage (and I have a new case with two extra fans anyway) so I'm not so
concerned about it overheating. :)

Bryan

Sure thing! I'm running Mandrake 9.1. I installed the most recent
Nvidia drivers from their web site, and then I only changed the device
section of the config file (so in other words everything is stock except
for this section).

I've got a few extra meta-modes sections as I was playing around with
different resolutions to figure out what worked best for the card, but
1024x768 does fine and MythTV/Mplayer run at lower resolutions anyway.

I had to set my TVOverscan to 0.4 to get the picture to fit on my TV,
you might need to play around with that a bit. There was about an inch
and a half of screen space on all four sides that was being cut off by
my TV (of course it's a big TV so an inch and a half is relative to that).

As I said before, using mplayer to play a DVD looks fantastic over
svideo now. The mpegs I capture with my WinTV PVR 250 leave a little to
be desired though. Right now it's good enough for recording shows I
know I'm going to miss, but I don't really want to use it for live tv yet.

Bryan

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "DPMS"

Option "NoLogo" "1"
Option "RenderAccel" "1"

Option "TwinView" "1"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "crt,tv"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-50"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
Option "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
Option "TVOverScan" "0.4"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
Option "DigitalVibrance" "0"
Option "MetaModes" "1024x768, 1024x768; 1024x768, 1024x768"
# Option "MetaModes" "800x600, 800x600; 800x600, 800x600"
# Option "MetaModes" "640x480, 640x480; 640x480, 640x480"
EndSection


>>>I'm watching my "Dark City" DVD right now, running on my P3/900mhz
>>>through and Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 card to my TV over SVideo. The
>>>picture is even better than my DVD player! Needless to say tomorrow I'm
>>>probably going to completely phase my DVD player out of my setup. No
>>>point in using it now. I have nothing but good things to say about the
>>>Nvidia card so far.
>>>
>>>
>
>Would you mind sharing your XF86Config. I have this card as well.
>
>Thanks,
>Larry
>
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net]On Behalf Of Bryan Murphy
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 11:04 AM
> To: matt@mmc.net; Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Recommendations?
>
>
> Matt wrote:
>
> >Bryan:
> >
> >Does your Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 have a built on fan?
> >
> >

I have a LeadTek GeForce4 MX _420_ (not a 440); it does have a fan.

-JAC

I've tried a few different resolutions and bit rates... form 720x480
down to 320x240. I've tried high bitrates (80000000 max and peak) to
low bit rates (40000000). Nothing has helped so far. When a lot of
action is going on on the screen things blur, and the news tickers on
the news channels drive me up a wall. I've tried running mplayer with a
bunch of post filters on the video stream, but they're only bandaid
solutions and have minimal impact.

My setup is DirecTV --svideo--> PVR 250 --svideo--> TV. It may very
well have something to do with it being a DirecTV receiver, but so far
nothing I've tried is helping.

I'd try regular broadcast television, but the reception in Chicago is
*TERRIBLE*. Not a single channel comes in well, so I wouldn't be able
to tell what's being caused by the recorder or what's interference.

Tonight I'm going to put the wintv card in my other machine (which is a
windows machine). I'll try the latest windows drivers to see what kind
of quality I can get with those. That should help track the problem
down. I'll also plug the VCR and/or the DVD player into the card to
find out if it's being caused by the DirecTV unit or not. I'll have a
better idea what's going on tomorrow, wether it's an artifact of my
setup or the ivtv driver itself.

Bryan

>>As I said before, using mplayer to play a DVD looks fantastic over
>>svideo now. The mpegs I capture with my WinTV PVR 250 leave a little to
>>be desired though. Right now it's good enough for recording shows I
>>know I'm going to miss, but I don't really want to use it for live tv yet.
>>
>>
>
>Have you changed the resolution that your PVR-250 is using to capture?
>The quality of my PVR-250 is just about as good as regular cable.
>
>What resolution are you capturing the Live stream with?
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>mythtv-users mailing list
>mythtv-users@snowman.net
>http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>
>

At 10:10 AM 6/11/03 -0500, Bryan Murphy wrote:
>Section "Device"
> Identifier "device1"
> VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
> BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
> Driver "nvidia"
> Option "DPMS"
>
> Option "NoLogo" "1"
> Option "RenderAccel" "1"
>
> Option "TwinView" "1"
> Option "ConnectedMonitor" "crt,tv"
> Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-50"
> Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
> Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
> Option "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
> Option "TVOverScan" "0.4"
> Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
> Option "DigitalVibrance" "0"
> Option "MetaModes" "1024x768, 1024x768; 1024x768, 1024x768"
># Option "MetaModes" "800x600, 800x600; 800x600, 800x600"
># Option "MetaModes" "640x480, 640x480; 640x480, 640x480"
>EndSection


Don't know if anyone else has run into this, but I found that if I set
RenderAccel to "1", my fonts and some of my icons all disappeared. Without
it, everything seems to work fine (so far; haven't actually run myth yet,
but mplayer and xawtv both work). I also have an NVidia GeForce 4 440 MX
card, a generic....and I don't have the box handy to say which one.