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General discussion

GeForce 4 MX440 TV OUT Not Satisfactory

Jan 25, 2006 9:49AM PST

I recently have been dabling in TV Out. I have an MSI GeForce 4 MX440, NVidia video card. I have the TV Out working but I find the quality to be less than acceptable. It is almost as though a small checkers are running through the screen.

My TV is a 50" Sony LCD, the video card came with a Vivo adapter that facilitates the S-video or RCA it also has a DVI & Vga. The VGA gos to my current monitor so the DVI is available to go to the TV however I don't yet have a DVI cable & am not sure if I should buy one. Perhaps I need a better quality video card & I can stick with S-video (I already bought a 25' cable) I heard that ATI provides better TV out. I'd hate to buy a DVI cable only to find that I get basically the same piture quality, besides I don't want to move my computer that close to the TV & even a short DVI cable is expensive.

Anyone care to advise me with this?

Discussion is locked

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Sounds familiar
Jan 25, 2006 10:28AM PST

I've dabbled with S-video output from my laptop and found it to quite poor. I wouldn't exactly describe it as a checker pattern, but it "shimmies" a bit. Part of this might be horsepower-related, particularly when both monitors are being driven at once; however, you should realize that S-Video resolution is roughly equivalent to 640x480 on a PC monitor. Nobody uses *that* these days, and you can imagine what it would look like on a 50" screen.

VGA output is the same quality as DVI, and quite a bit cheaper. I'm aware of KVM switches, which allow you to connect a single keyboard/mouse/monitor to two PCs. A multi-output VGA switch (if such a thing exists) would probably do the trick.

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please fill me in...
Feb 18, 2006 1:35AM PST

hi
i have an hp compaq nx 9105 with a nvidia geforce4 440 GO and i haven't yet been able to make the tv out work.
can u tell me how did u make yours to work? what kind of connector did u use (4 pin or 7 pin Svideo, or smth else)?
does it have anything to do with the win XP HOME edition i use? does it need to be professional?
pls help me cause' i'm loosing my minds over here!


lots of thanks

meltor

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Options
Feb 20, 2006 3:33AM PST

If I've understood your original post correctly, it sounds as if you've only tried S-video. This will not give you an acceptable level of resolution. Try the RCA out (temporarily, not as a permanent solution) and you will see a similarly low quality result for comparison's sake.

DVI or VGA are your best options for an HDTV. I am using VGA to connect directly to my 50" plasma set - the quality is outstanding, and I'm not using a partilcularly high-powered video card.

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It is the cable
Jan 25, 2006 12:43PM PST

Just about any video card out there will support 1024x768 and much sharper. Your card far exceeds any demand you will need for HDTV. Your faster cards with more RAM just help the newer 3D video games.

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DVI or VGA
Jan 26, 2006 8:18AM PST

I have DVI Female on both my TV & my video card. Does video travel both ways on a DVI-D cable with male on both ends? I notice a lot of DVI cables have m on one end & f on the other.

Or would I be better off getting a VGA adapter for the TV DVI port & sending the vga cable to the TV?