I wasn’t sure where this question belonged. It begins as a GQ, but I’m sure the immediate follow up is going to be a poll on opinions so I stuck it here. I’m hoping enough people with knowledge on the subject stroll through.
Here’s the deal, I’ve got a DVD player on my desktop computer, and I don’t have a DVD player for my TV. I’ve been planning on buying one, but I want to save up for a good system. I’m unemployed at the moment so I’m not likely to spring for the quality that I want. So I’m looking to maybe buy a reciever card, or some comparable component, that’ll get me by on what I have in the meantime. What type of product do I need for this?
As far as I know reciever cards are meant to be able to play TV (cable) stations on your monitor, does the reverse work with the typical one? Do most do both?
Also, if possible, one with RCA jacks so I can pump my MP3 through into my existing reciever would be an excellentbonus. Are there cards that handle this too?
The obvious follow up would be what brand or specifications should I look for here for? Especially at a reasonable price, ideally under or near $100.
You can get a barrage of -video out- cards at any good electronics store for about 100 bucks. What you need for the MP3s is a sound card that can push the signal to an input on your home reciever. The sound card I have now cant do that if the reciever is more than ten feet from the computer (line loss occurs). My new ATI RADEON video card does have video out, so I can hook a TV up to the thing. It cost about 140 bucks. A new sound card will run me about 70. If you keep your TV close to your computer you may only need the video card. I don`t know about the reciever part of the question, sorry. Good luck.
If you can’t put out video OR audio, then you need a new video card AND an audio card. IMHO, buying a stand-alone DVD player to use with your TV is a better choice for you.
You will not be able to purchase anything for your computer for less than the cost of a POS standalone DVD player, and the quality will be better with the POS standalone DVD player.
Not true. The cheapest method of outputting DVD video from a computer is to install a REALMagic Hollywood+ PCI card. The quality easily rivals that of standalone players and at a cheaper price. Another bonus is that it does hardware decoding so it can run very well on slower systems.
Another option is the X10 DVD Anywhere. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to worry about running cables all over the place. The disadvantage is that picture quality will be slightly degraded with RF transmission.
My own system has an ATI Radeon 7500 w/TV out which provides excellent quality. ATI’s 3D performance may fall behind other cards like NVidia but its multimedia performance is excellent. Using a card like this will also allow you to view AVI or Quicktime movies on your TV which is not possible with the previous 2 suggestions.
Yeah, but throw in a sound card on top of any of these video cards (none of which export sound, only video), and you may as well just buy a normal home DVD player. You can get an excellent one for under $200, and a decent one for under $100.
I assumed, given the apparently unfulfilled desire in the OP to run sound into the home stereo, that either there was no sound card, or that it doesn’t have external outputs.
Omniscient, if you have a sound card with miniplug or RCA jacks, you should already be capable of going into your home stereo with your MP3s.
The RealMagic Hollywood Plus is an excellent piece of hardware. Which costs $80. DVD anywhere sounds suspicious, the last thing I bought that was “wireless connection from 100 feet away, even through walls!” only had an interference-free range of 4 feet, and then only if nothing walked in between the receiver and the broadcaster. And it’s still $69.
An Apex AD-1500 DVD Player gives you component video output (RealMagic only does S-video, I believe) for $60 at Amazon. I stand by my initial post.
I think Apex is available for 60 at Circuit City. And since you get a remote control it should be more convenient than having to use your PC to watch DVD’s.
I have a work laptop (some kind of dell, about 1yr old) which has built in S-video out. I actually discovered this in a stupid way when I found a little S-video to RCA adapter in my carrying case during a boring meeting on a biz trip.
I thought this would be a neat way to have a slideshow of digitial photos for a roomful rather than crowding around the computer in my messy home office. I got an RCA cable, ran the computer output into the back of my VCR (my tv is so old it only has coax and vhf fork inputs), figured out the configuration requirements, and voila. The scan rate and resolution are obviously too low to read fine text but full screen photos show up just fine.
Then I thought, I wonder if I could run the laptop DVD into the TV? (I don’t have a DVD player on my TV right now). Loaded the winDVD software, rented a disc, it runs on the laptop monitor no problem. when I route this signal to the TV, what I get is a periodic “signal fade” where the picture will be crystal clear for a few seconds, and then “left shift” about an inch, and get very dark and blurry for a few seconds, and then be perfect again. This cycle just repeats itself.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether I assign the TV as primary, secondary, or sole output. I can’t see how to adjust scan rates (plus the scan rate on the TV CRT is fixed, right)? It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not the computer is running anything else, overtly or in the background. It doesn’t seem to matter if the computer is plugged in or off battery.
So, clearly in this case I don’t even know enough to be dangerous. Any dopers out there have any suggestions? Am I up against some fundamental barrier of processor speed or some other hardware bottleneck? Is the winDVD player too much of a system hog?