akirkham

What is the native resolution of your LCD TV? Most LCD monitors look terrible at anything other than native resolution. The 17" LCD I have looks sharp at 1280x1024, but a little fuzzy at 1024x768, and absolute crap at 800x600. Since you're using s-video, you'll be using the tv out on your GeForce FX, which will no doubt be at 800x600. The native resolution of your 20" tv is surely higher than that, hence the image is poor quality. I take it the tv doesn't accept DVI or VGA connections from a pc then? That would be the best solution if possible, as you could simply match the resolution in windows to the tv. Another thing I've been looking at is some of the GeForce 6x00 series cards that come with an extra box for HD tv output. I think you then connect this to the tv using component video connectors (Y, Pr, Pb RCA jacks) and can get anything from 480p to 1080i signals from it. Maybe nVidia's site has a bit more info on this? If your tv doesn't take component video input either then I think selling it and getting something that does is the easiest and most cost effective solution.

That wasn't too difficult. Installed the driver on the cd that came with the soundcard since MCE didn't have a driver for it. After a reboot, there was an icon for the soundcard config in the system tray. You have to tell it there are 2 speakers connected then turn on SPDIF output on another page. You can't get SPDIF output to work if you say you have anything other than 2 speakers for some reason. It upmixes all sounds to 5.1 output on SPDIF now - I get Windows startup/shutdown sounds played through the A/V amp and the only connection is the optical cable. I also have WinDVD 7 installed for DVD playback, and there was another option in there to use SPDIF output. I thought about plugging the s-video cable straight to the tv, but my standalone dvd player was connected the same way and that had no problem with widescreen. I've been doing a bit more googling, and think the problem could be that the tv encoder on the video card is only capable of 800x600 or 1024x768 output. Powerstrip is the software you were thinking of. I've been planning to hunt it down and give it a try, but I'm leaning towards buying a nice big LCD tv instead and using the DVI connector

I'm already using the latest nVidia drivers for MCE (72.14)! I downloaded them only yesterday. I assumed that there would be something in there that was of use, but 2 hours of looking and playing with things didn't get me anywhere. I know I can use the zoom function on my TV, but this is treating the symptom not fixing the problem. Surely there's a way to get 16:9 output from the s-video port on a nVidia card ... ?

Hello! I have recently put together a machine to act as dvd, divx and mp3 player, which I eventually plan to upgrade to pvr duties also. The idea is that this machine will replace my Yamaha standalone DVD player. This is a fairly decent DVD player, and I'm looking for similar quality output from the pc. The hardware setup is as follows: Sempron 3000+ (S754) with 512MB RAM GeForce FX5200 (from my spares cupboard). Trust 514DX soundcard (optical and coax in/out) Silverstone LC10M case with iMON remote & VFD. MCE 2005, nVidia MCE driver 72.14 I'm connecting the S-video output on the nVidia card to my A/V receiver, along with the optical output from the soundcard. The receiver outputs the video to a 28" widescreen tv. I've managed to get the sound sorted so that I get full 5.1 output through the receiver. The problem is the video. I cannot get it to output in widescreen. The only way I can get the picture in the correct proportions is to set the pc res to 800x600 and have the tv expect a 4:3 input, but this sucks since it only uses a tiny box in the centre of the tv. I have black bars left & right due to the tv getting 4:3 input, and then bars top and bottom from the pc playing the widescreen dvd. When I tried setting the desktop resolution to 1024x576 it just makes me scroll left/right to see the full desktop I've been through the nVidia display settings numerous times and haven't found anything that helps. Is the tv-out fixed at 4:3 ratio? Or is there another way round this? Using a pc monitor is not a valid answer! Surely the whole point of MCE was that you could use a TV as your display, and obviously most people have widescreen? Thanks, Andy