Hello,
I want to send a video signal out to my TV from my computer. Does anyone know the cheapest way for me to achieve nice quality video on my TV from my computer. I’m really interested in a alternative to buying a new video card. Like an adapter or something.(Oh yeah I need to send the signal through RCA lines)If there is no known alternative, then whats the StraightDope on Video cards that do this.
Thanks
JellyMan
I have a voodoo 3500tv that i use for tv out, it has all kinds of inputs and outputs, including rca (composite). if you don’t want to get a video card, I remember seeing a box at Best Buy or something like that that converted the pc video to tv, and that ran around a hundred bucks. A quick search of Pricewatch didn’t turn up anything like that though.
Are you saying you video card only has VGA out?
If so then the cheapest way would be to either
A). Get another video card that has TV out. Most new ones do.
B). Get an MPEG-2 decoder card (last I checked around $50) which will allow you to to VGA out, TV out or S-Video out.
C). S-Video out will probably be your best quality.
Sorry but technology is working against ‘nice quality’ video on your television from your computer. There are many ways to get crappy video to your TV from your computer, and some of these are quite expensive.
Direct your research towards ‘scan converters: VGA to NTSC’ and decide what you really want to do. Usually it is cheaper to get a bigger computer monitor than to convert your VGA signal. Cheap scan converters are all but useless.
I bought a brand new scan converter on E-bay for $40.
It works quite nicely and connects to the monitor outlet, so you don’t have to open your computer up and insert another video card. The unit came with special editing software, but you don’t need that just to watch your computer on a television. The unit is very small, about the size of a remote control. I recommend it.
My main reason for sending the video out is to watch Sonique mp3 visuals on my TV while I listen to mp3s. I just built my house and hard wired RCA lines from my computer room to my living room. I have the sound part working fine but I just can’t get the video converted to RCA, also some day I would like to edit home movies on my hard drive and play them straight from my hard drive to my TV. Thanks for the help so far. Still seems my only alternative is to drop $150.00 or so on a new video card. Which is more than I want to spend right now.
JellyMan
Then get the Dazzle. It’s a nifty box with tons of video inputs & outputs & video editing capacity. Its about $200. Might be less now.
All this is absurd. Go on ebay or pricewatch one and find an old all-in-wonder card or cheap mpeg-2 card. You should be able to find SOMETHING with tv out for around $30. It’s not like you need amazing clarity or resolution here. My video card is a voodoo3 3000, which you should be able to find for $70 or so online. Video out is very decent for playing videos, dvd’s etc. It can be fuzzy for text, however. You can get something decent here for much, much less than $100. Don’t be suckered into getting some “Professional Editing Solution” with bundled software.
Naw, ATI is too tricky with tv out.
Hey, try dazzle.com its got tons of products that answer this whole thing.
My MPEG-2 card’s composite video output only puts out the MPEG-2 stream. It does not output any of the rest of the video singal. Are others different from this?
That doesn’t sound right. The whole purpose of an MPEG-2 decoder card is to decode the MPEG-2 stream and output it as a viewable format. If your card takes in an MPEG-2 stream and outputs an MPEG-2 stream, then I would venture to say it is useless. A piece of wire could do the same thing. Your composite video output should be analog video.
It is analog video, but only the video created from the MPEG-2 stream. I did not say that the port spits out a digital MPEG-2 stream, but implied, at least in context, since I was talking about a composite video port, therefore, by any definition of composite video I have ever heard of, analog, that it was sending the decoded MPEG-2 stream in composite video format. This is to differentiate the observed function of my card from claims made by other posters that their MPEG-2 cards displayed the entire desktop display via the composite port.
It’s fine to pick nits, but at least read the context of the post before you start.