Questions about TV out video cards

[jelloslug]

With my cocktail almost finished, I have started planing my next project.  I think I will be going with a TV for the monitor on the next cab and I have a few questions about TV out cards since I have never had one before.

1)  Is the TV out part of the card on all the time or does it need drivers to run?

2)  Is the bleading from one pixel to another comparable to an arcade monitor or is it better or worst? (assuming you are using S-video on an average quality TV)

3)  Which video card would you say is the best quality vs. price?


Also, I will probally be getting rid of my upright cab.  If anyone wants it, drop me a message.  The cab will be COMPLETLY gutted but you can have all the modular control panels plates I have made.  You will have to pick it up and it will still be a little while till I need to get rid of it.

[JustMichael]

1...Depends upon the card.  YMMV.  My Asus 7100 will default to using the tv-out if that is the only monitor connected.  I can watch the whole bootup sequence too.  Windows shows up fine (just a bit fuzzy like an arcade monitor).

2...I thought it looked just like the arcade on the tv (except a bit too much red in the image).  I guess I am spoiled by nice crisp pc graphics so I went with a pc monitor.

3...From reading the message board I would guess an ATI card would be your best bet.  I have no experience with ATI though.

[Mike]

I think is what your asking is can you run it in dos. I've heard it can be done but is frustrating. The quality of the TV is good the colors shouldn't be a problem if your using windows because you can adjust them. As far as cards, I used a Radeon VE and it looked awesome compared to a TNT2. The only disadvantage to the VE is that it only supports one monitor at a time. But it is cheap just make sure you go with a real ATI card no knock off.

[TapeWurm]

Well, this stupid board killed my long reply, so here's the quicky...This is in regards to my ATI all-in-wonder pro 128.
1)TV out is not on all the time. No DOS driver either. If I hit the reset switch while in Windows, it'll boot-up with TV out ON, giving me DOS (minus controls and functions for fine tuning though).
2)Bleeding is NOT a problem. Windows is quite blurry, but games look FANTASTIC on the TV. Much better than on the monitor, in my opinion (and friends I've asked).
3)Board members seem to mostly agree that ATI TV output can't be beat. I've only tried one other and it sucked BIG TIME (an old Viper card). Also, I get to use the monitor and TV out at the same time. Lots of cards are one or the other. Having both helped a lot during the build phase.
Hope this helps.
TapeWurm

[Howard_Casto]

Ati good, anything else bad.  

Ok as for the dual monitor support.... the radeon 7500 and above supports mutliple displays on at a time.  (The others did, but it squished the crt display until you turned the tv out off)  You can only take advantage of these cards in windows, however as a bit of software sends hardware changes to the card to tell it not to sync the svga and tv-out together.  In dos your going to get the maximum allowed res automatically.  This kind of sucks though as that's not always what you want.  Also in dos the svga out is going to be on all the time as is the tv-out.  Another thing to consider.

The picture quality when using svid is almost identical to an arcade display.  In some instances the colors look only slightly faded though.  It ends up looking like an arcade monitor that's been used for a while and thus isn't quite as bright.  It actually looks quite nice.  

[tubuku01]

just wondering..........i'm currently running a VisionTek Geforce 3 ti 200 with s-vid out.  i'm also using that toshiba tv that alot of mamers are using.  my question is..is the quality of the video-out on the ati cards better (better picture, little bleed, etc.)?  i'm not talking about features because only the picture interests me.
 the card i'm using now runs the video nice, but me being the everlasting perfectionist MUST have nice video out for my mame cab.  
 i'm planning on building a pc strictly for use in the mame cab, and i'd like to stick with my current card for my regular pc gaming, sorry to make it long, so thanks for reading.

[GGKoul]

I'm presently using a 29" Zenith TV and it's connected to my video card, a GeForce 2 MX 440, via the S-Video out.  

And after reading all these posts on about how ATI cards offer better TV video capabilities.   I'm going to too purchase an 64 meg ATI Radeon 7000 or 7500 card to see if there is a noticeable difference.  

As I too am a perfectionist ....

So I'll let you know my findings ASAP.

Thanks
-GGKoul

[Lilwolf]

before throwing out a Geforce card and buying an ATI... I want to mention.

the ONLY trouble with Geforces is that you don't know what your buying.  NVidia doesn't make a TV-out chip.  They sell their chips to other companys that buy their own TV-out chip.  Some are Great (maybe even better then ATI) and many many suck.

So what does this mean.  ATI has consistency with a GREAT tv-out chip.  But so does some Geforces... but you wont know until you get it.  

what I've heard about different brands

don't go elsa ever

Phillips tv-out chips set is great  (they did just come out with a cheaper one for the geforce 4 4200's though... don't know if they are any good).

ViVo are almost all good (because the cheap chips don't support the video in).

[lightspeed]

LilWolf brings up some interesting points regarding the TV-out quality of nVidia cards - some offer excellent output, others suck.

Another thing to be aware of - ATI also resells their chipsets, so you can by a card based on the Radeon that is manufactured by a different company.  You'll want to avoid these - like many of the nVidia resellers, the TV components they use are very sub-par.   Stay away from anything that mentiones "Powered by ATI" - these are the third party cards.  If you do decide to purchase an ATI card, make sure it was manufactured by ATI ("Built by ATI" is usually displayed on the box.   Thier website will tell you how to tell the difference:

http://www.ati.com/support/powered.html

I've also heard excellent reviews on Matrox products for their image quality and TV output.  This is kinda thier market niche - they certainly don't offer the best performance (not needed for MAME anyway), but the picture quality of thier cards is renoun.