is the TV out noticably better on ATI's?? ***FIXED***

[Layer01]

i just plugged in my TV to my second PC wich has a Gforce4 TI4200 128meg in it, (this was the crad i was thinking of using with my soon to be built mame PC) but the image looked horrible i had two options for connecting it, one was a straight s-video cable from the pc to the TV, the other was an s-cable from the PC which then went into the Yellow plug on the RCA IN section.

the streight S-video look HORRIBLE, so bad it wasnt funny, all the colours were fine, but it seemed like there was a checkered pattern moving up the screen constantly (its sort of hard to describe)
and the S-video to yellow RCA looked better but not perfect, it had the "moving" pixels on the edges of things (like window boxes)

so is this just the gforce thing? something that can be fixed, or should i invest in an ATI?? assuming they dont have the same problem of course.

[MiKman]

I have 4 different cards I have tried on my cabinet.  ATI isn't always the best, with the nvidia cards some brands use lower end tv out chips.  I tried them all in the cabinet, All using a straight (high quality) s-video cable to an RCA 27" TV, using latest drivers I could get my hands on for all of them.  None have the problem you describe.  Sounds like you have an interference problem or something to me.  Anyhow from Absolute best picture (1) (in my opinion) to the worst (4).  Currently I have the Radeon in the cabinet just because the drivers give me the best control over the old drivers for the Rage Pro, and the Geforce 4 Ti is in my main computer. Which when I upgrade it I will move the Geforce 4 Ti into the cabinet...  Anyhow to answer your question, you will get varying results with all manufactures, but newer cards tend to have better TV out than older cards do.

1) MSI Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128meg
2) ATI Rage Fury Pro 8 meg 
3) Built by ATI Radeon VE 32 meg
4) ASUS Geforce 256 v6600 32meg

[Layer01]

interferance..i hadn't thought of that, it would be possible seeing as i had just moved the TV close to the second PC which is close to my first PC which has two moniters (both of which were on at the time) so for a  whopping total of 3 monitors and two PC's shooting out rays at it....i'll have to try it without so much PC activity arround it.

as for the cable, i was just useing the one supplied with the card, does yours plug into the s-video (i'm thinking of the small circle one with lots of holes and one square hole) or into your RCA (yellow red and white ones) sorry i'm no TV tech buff and i am not sure if i'm using the right names for the right parts so i thought better to describe them rather than get everyone confused 

so atm Gforce Ti 4200 is a better choice eh? i think i may even have the same brand as yours too 

[Jakobud]

Keep in mind guys, that the quality of tv output from a video card is not really dependant on what type of video card it is, but more by what type of television video encoding chip is used on the video card.  Different brands use different chips and different models use different chips.  A common example of a brand of chip is Conexant.

[Layer01]

so is there any way of knowing if the card you are about to buy has a good chip on it?
or do you just have to go off recomendations

[Layer01]

yep it was interference    with the Geforce 4 TI 4200 the image is now Wonderfull, after a bit of tweaking of the colour contrast etc.. on the TV it was looking flawless 

[SOAPboy]

Keep in mind guys, that the quality of tv output from a video card is not really dependant on what type of video card it is, but more by what type of television video encoding chip is used on the video card.