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Author Topic: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out  (Read 4785 times)

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Alienreb

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I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« on: March 13, 2002, 05:10:38 pm »
When I first got into building my cabinet, I knew that the display would be of utmost importance.  When I first used my GeForce3 Ti-200 card as well as my friend's ATI Radeon 8500 to see the results, I was +/- on the whole thing.  Yeah, I could have dealt with the picture quality had I used the TV-Out from either one of the video cards, but it was obvious that the games didn't look as good as they did on the monitor.  Heck, even the monitor made the games appear too crisp-looking because of the high resolutions used when playing the games.   An arcade monitor would have worked nicely, but they are expensive, dangerous to work with, and I would have had to tinker around the resolutions/refresh rates to get it to work properly.  I don't have the time or the patience to play with those things.   All in all, I needed to find a way to get the maximum picture quality out of a television set with my video card.  So....  

Of all places to find a perfect solution for projecting a PC signal to a TV, I found one in my Pschology II class this past week.  All semester long, I had been taking notes from the professor's 42 inch television screen, but the thought never occurred to me that I could use the same device she was using on my television at home.  Here I have been all this time trying to figure out the perfect solution for transferring the PC signal to my TV with good quality and the answer was sitting was under my nose!  Well, to make a long story short,  I was finishing up a test last week when my mind started to wonder.  I started to think about my unfinished cabinet sitting at the house.  Well, I looked up and saw the instructor's TV and well...I put the two together and you know the rest of the story.   The device she was using is something known as an "AverKey".  Before you go off on a search for an "Averkey" and leave the rest of this post in the dust, let me finish telling you about it.  Using this device is going to save you a lot of time and money, and your friends are going to love the quality that it puts out on your TV.    

If any of you are using TV-Out on your NVIDIA/ATI card for your cabinet, you really need to get one of these things to augment your card.  Even if you have a video card that doesn't have a TV-Out slot on it, you can still use the Averkey to project the standard VGA signal on your card as a TV-Out signal.    An "Averkey" device allows you to connect devices with VGA and S-video right up to your TV with minute signal loss.   In fact, the picture quality from the "Averkey" is superior to that from a standard TV-Out card.   I have tried gold-plated S-video cords coupled with the TV-Out on my friend's ATI Radeon card before and even the quality of that card ALONE didn't match that with one coupled with the Averkey.    

An Averkey has every feature you would want on TV-out including zoom, stretch, higher resolution that what the regular TV-out offers. Images fit perfectly on the TV. I was playing some NeoGeo games on one of those and WOW!. No jaggies on the TV, beautiful colors, nice and smooth image,  Windows 2000 desktop looks beautiful, etc etc.   Samurai Showdown and Bust-A-Move(puzzle game) retained all of their vibrant colors like they had in the arcade.  

Another cool feature is that no software is needed and you don't have to be switching between TV and monitor since it displays whatever is on your monitor on your TV at the same time. Meaning also that it can be used on any OS, Linux, Dos, Windows as well as ArcadeOS, and any other DOS or Windows emulators.  

What makes the Averkey so special is that it is designed for teachers, instructors, or anyone that wants to display computer information on a television screen.   Those kind of people don't have a lot of time to be fooling around with display settings or trying to adjust the contrast on the television screen.  The picture quality delivered by the Averkey is unmatched in today's market of TV-Out in my opinion.  I have tried a lot of devices in trying to find the best output to my television screen and this is the one device I have found that actually makes the picture crystal clear.  

This may be old news to some, but I just wanted to tell you about this thing I stumbled across this past week.    If you have an exisiting video card and want to up the quality on your TV or if you are considering buying a card, make sure you use this thing with it.   The cost for the standard Averkey is $99 and it can go as high as $299.   I will tell you now that I don't have a lot of money to go blow on devices so I opted for the $99 model.   I don't think there is a difference in the quality between the $99 and $299 model except for some extra features and perks that usually don't apply to any of us.   The main website that sells these is located at  http://www.aver.com  

The page on that site that contains the $99 model is right here:

http://www.aver.com/products/averkey_imicro01.html


For average users such as you and I, the $99 model is way more than enough.   There are too many features for me to list right here so I'll let you do that at the above links.   I saved a lot of time, money, hassle, and hair by using one of these.  

-Alienreb
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

Jonathan_the_Red

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2002, 05:44:21 pm »
Hold on one sec.

Devices that convert a standard VGA monitor signal to a TV-compatible composite or S-Video signal have been around for awhile and are as a class known as "scan converters". There are other options available besides Averkey. Many are cheaper and some may be superior.

Focus Enhancements makes a whole series of scan converters called "TView." From what I've heard, they're exceptional, with the TView Gold being best of the bunch. They frequently go for less than $100 on eBay. I picked up a TView Micro XGA from eBay for $67 shipped. I've barely had a chance to try it (my @#$%^!! hard drive died) but from what little I saw, it looked good. I'll be able to make a full report by Sunday or Monday.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

CthulhuLuke

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2002, 12:24:37 am »
So basically this AverKey has some kind of filter when it changes from S-Video or VGA to Composite that blurs it a bit, making it seem to look a lot smoother.  I've heard that if you get a pretty good TV like a Sony with S-video input, the filter on the TV naturally blurs it enough that it looks great, but some TV's s-video input filters look like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.  I'm probably going to stick with the ATI when I get my comp, but if anyone has anything to report that's better than a very good tv with an s-video input, please inform me.
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« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

mpm32

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2002, 08:10:16 am »
How does it look in composite?  If it looks good, it would save some the trouble and expense of looking for S-vid tvs.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

The Man

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2002, 10:09:11 am »
???  Now thats the big question.  I have a JVC TV with the remote receiver side out.  Its just sitting there.  Maybe something like this could help.  Without S-Video, composite is my only option and with that lookin so bad and all.  I'm not even going to try it.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

gajaman

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2002, 11:35:17 am »
Do you know if it can output to SCART. I was about to get a tv out card but if this gives the same quality picture or better I could go down this route.

Arghh! I'd almost made my mind up!    ;)
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

Jonathan_the_Red

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2002, 12:18:45 pm »
No matter what you do, you ain't gonna get good quality video from a composite connection. A scan converter might (or might not) do better than the crappy composite out from most video cards, but it's probably not worth it.

I believe all of the TView scan converters are capable of producing SCART output. Mine has a DIP switch you set for NTSC or PAL/SCART. The manual mentions that an SCART cable is included with European versions only, but if you don't need the cable you could probably buy an American version and just change the DIP switch.

A brief check of some of the Averkey models shows that at least some of them do SCART as well.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

pink

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2002, 02:42:31 pm »
Averkey is just a brand of scan converter.  This is nothing new and a search of the old message board will reveal tons and tons of old arguments about pros and cons of scan converters in arcade cabinets.  Obviously, lots of this stuff boils down to personal tastes and preferences, and this is no different.  There are plenty of people, including myself, that feel the output of a tvout video card with a decent chipset is superior to that of most scanconverters (I happen to own an averkey as well as 2 other brands).  So I would caution to take this glowing review with a grain of salt .. that being said, if it works for you its a good solution no matter what anyone else says. :)

- pink
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

The Man

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2002, 03:01:55 pm »
Anyone have some pic's of this stuff?  I just don't want to spend the money if its going to suck.  I would be better off buying an arcade monitor, but this 32 inch TV is just sitting here  ;D

TM
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

CthulhuLuke

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2002, 08:11:49 pm »
Aight, well I've done some research on the topic a bit ago for my cabinet, and I've decided on getting an ATI video card with S-Video out, here's my reasoning.  http://www.xiaou2.homestead.com/turbo.html    props to the guy who did that demonstration.
ohhhh.. I just found the exact link you're looking for for an Averkey and ATI comparison,  it's in spanish though, so I put googlefish on it.
http://world.altavista.com/sites/auen/pos/babelfish/tr?lp=es_en&tt=url&url=http://www.agoranet.es/~ddv/cabinet/tele.htm
Thanx to Miya for making that comparison.  You can see that the composite Averkey bleeds some of the color, and the ATI keeps the color strong, plus smoothes jaggies.
 -hope that helps
  -CthulhuLuke
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »

enemyace

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Re: I have found the ultimate cure-all to TV-Out
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2002, 02:38:55 pm »
Does anyone have an idea of how good the s-video tv-out from a Matrox G400 MAX is? I have that card and have never output it to TV, but I would be interested to know if anyone has used or seen one in action before.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 pm by 1026619200 »