Specs to look for in a graphics card for DVD/AVI playing & TV-out

Factual Questions
1

I’m not a gamer, and I know very little about graphic cards.

I don’t want 3-d hardware acceleration, DirectX 9.0 compatiability, or 480 FPS or whatever.

I do want a graphics card that will allow me to play DVDs, AVIs, MPGs etc. smoothly, and more importantly, good TV-out capability (or, alternatively, good output to a 2nd monitor). I’m thinking that a high memory requirement would be an issue here on TV-out… I think a graphic’s card memory size pertains to the actual number of pixels (screen resolution) not performance so this could be an issue in using a 2nd monitor, but as usual, I can be wrong.

With that in mind, what specs should I look for, and what’s the best card fitting my needs? I have a Radeon 9500 and while it’s adequate it’s not 100% especially if I set up my TV as a 2nd, separate monitor–reduces the color resolution in both the LCD and TV.

2

Your current videocard is the best you’re going to get. No other model can deliver superior TV out quality, there’s just a hard limit to how good the TV signal can be and how well the TV can display it. If you’re using RF (coaxial cable) or composite (one-pin) video into the TV, you’ll see a noticeable improvement by using SVIDEO if the TV supports it. If the TV doesn’t support it, you might consider a new TV, if display quality is important to you. Heck, you can get 22" CRT monitors for around $99 on the low end these days, this will give you a better display than any TV could. As for video memory, you could run three 1600x1200@32bit monitors simultaneously while consuming under 24MB, so it’s not really an issue.