GeForce3 Ti-200 users using TVs..question for you

[Alienreb]

I'm thinking about buying a TV, but I don't want to buy one only for it not to work with my GeForce3 Ti-200 card.  If anybody out there is using this same card with a 24 inch or larger TV, could you tell me the exact model of your TV?  From what I've read, Phillips television sets are real buggy when it comes to TV-Out so I'd like to stay away from them if at all possible.

BTW, I checked on some 24-25 inch monitors and the prices are..well... ...so I've decided to use the TV approach.   For those that responsed to my post on the old board, thanks for your replies.  TV looks like the way I'll go since it is quite a bit cheaper than a monitor.   The pictures of my cabinet are on the way as soon as I can get a working TV mounted inside of it.


-Alienreb

[Lilwolf]

More important then the brand of tv...

what brand of Geforce are you using (and what TV-out chips on it).

since there is a different TV-out chip on every manufacturer, some have great output with a Geforce and some have crappy outup.  

If it's TV-in and TV-out, you are almost guaranteed great output....

[Alienreb]

The brand is a PNY Technolgies Verto card.  Is there any way that I can tell just how good the output is?  Is there a website that has the different brands ranked in quality?

[aramis]

the brand of tv shouldn't matter at all...it is the quality of the tv-out chip on the video card that matters. (Exactly like lilwolf said).

According to Tomshardware.com, the ONLY geforce cards (GF2, GF3, etc) to have full-screen centered tv-out are the ones that use the Philips VIVO (video-in, video-out) combo chip. These cards have video-in ability as well as video-out, but the video-out on these combo cards is MUCH better than the cards with just video-out.

So, look for a Geforce card that has the Philips VIVO chip on it, and not the Chrontel or Conexant chips. However, if you were unfortunate enough to already buy a card that doesn't use the Philips chip, then a software utility called TVTOOL might help. Depending on what non-Philips chip you have, it may be able to fix the not-fullscreen, not-centered image. However, this is an additional piece of software to load and run, and AFAIK it only works on certain models of Conexant and/or Chrontel chips and not all of them.

All in all, the borders around the image on the TV are NOT due to the TV model, but due to the really crappy implementation of tv-out on the majority of Geforce cards. The only ones I've seen that use the Philips chip were made by ASUS, MSI and Gainward.

Also, you want a TV with S-Video in, it looks much better than the standard RCA jack connection. A 25" TV with S-Vid is hard to find, I finally found one at BJ's Wholesale Club.

[OSCAR]

the brand of tv shouldn't matter at all...it is the quality of the tv-out chip on the video card that matters. (Exactly like lilwolf said).

While the brand of TV may not matter, I have to say that the *quality* of the TV does.  I have had 3 TV's connected to the same PC w/ video card, and I have seen major differences in the display.  For the record, I used an nvidia based card with the brooktree 869 tv-out chip.  [sidenote:  I have directly compared the quality of this card with two other ATI's (AIW 128 and Radeon 7500), but I won't even comment on my results because no ATI-fans would ever believe me.    /sidenote]  I'm talking strictly TV's here, and I don't want to start a video card debate, although I have tried this following test with my ATI Radeon 7500 and got exactly the same results.


First, I used a new 'cheapest I could find' Zenith 27" (model C27A24T) w/ s-video, and the picture was so terrible using the s-video, I couldn't play a single game of Ms. Pac-Man because the color bleed blurred everything very badly.

Next, I connected an older 27" Toshiba w/ s-video (model CF2772B), and the results were much better.  No color bleed at all, but the Windows desktop was a bit blurry when trying to read text.

Finally, I connected the same PC to a new Toshiba 27" cinema series w/ s-video (model 27AX61) and the display is simply superb!  I can easily read icon text, text files, configure the mame.ini file, etc...

I have all three TV's sitting side-by-side, and difference between them is very obvious when connected to the same PC.  Perhaps some of the reason a lot of people can't agree on what the best video card to use for MAME cabinets is partly because some people are using "cheap" TV's and some are using higher quality TV's .  I don't know, just a theory....


--OSCAR

[aramis]

Oscar,

That's some good info...I didn't realize there was that much variance in the s-vid circuitry in tv's. Good call...

I think you got a rare "good" geforce tv-out card. Most of them that are not VIVO (i.e., use the philips chip) suffer from a shrunken, non-centered image on a TV. No amount of adjusting will fix it, and you end up suffering with black borders around the image. TVTOOL can fix this for some chips/cards, but it appears that the cards that use the Philips' VIVO chip don't have this problem at all...

It's been a sore spot for a long time that the nVidia based cards have really crappy (shrunken image) tv-out. The ATI's give a full-screen image right out of the box, no frustration and 3rd party software required...

[OSCAR]

I never said geforce...