TV-out on nvidia card

[akirkham]

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

[jcarle]

Make sure you get the latest version of the official nVidia reference drivers from their website. The control panel for nVidia drivers is complete enough that you should be able to accomplish what you want. Also, your TV should have a zoom feature to allow you to fit the movie to the width of the TV and cut out the top and bottom bars.

[akirkham]

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 ... ?

[Sampson]

akirkham, how did you get that sound card to use dolby digital/dts in mce???

I've was desperate for months to get that working, and gave up in the end... PLEASE tell me... I can only get it to work by playing through windvd; mce just won't let me select sp/dif output.

As for your problem, have you tried taking the pc svideo directly to the tv bypassing the a/v??? (i know its not what you want in the end, but just to test).

Some cables/converters can't carry a widescreen signal, and it could well be that your a/v reciever uses them at some point... worth a try at least.

As a second option, I know mce has real problem with widescreen (crazy, i know...) bu I'm sure I read about some people using a graphics app with nvidia cards to sort it, I just can't quite remember the name now... power something I think... I'll try and find it again.

[akirkham]

how did you get that sound card to use dolby digital/dts in mce???

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

[Sampson]

Hmm.. odd... I've done all that with mce, and have all the same options (icon in taskbar, using 2 speaker mode to use optical out).

I get all my sounds working fine out the optical, and full dd and dts from inside windvd, but just only stereo in mce. mce options allows me to choose speker settings, but has spdif greyed out. Very weird.

Not got windvd 7 though, i'm using one that came with the card, version 4 or something low like that.

If you can afford the lcd tv, go for it. The quality of DVI over svideo is outstanding and certainly a good move... if you can afford.

[charlie_r]

Slightly related question: I have a GeForce FX card and I have plugged it into my 20 inch LCD TV via S-video cable and the picture is far from perfect. It is not clear-enough to read many pop-ups. I have tried buying better cables and this makes no difference. Is it normal for the image quality to be this bad? I upgraded to this card mainly for this reason. Do I need to buy a more expensive card? If so, which one would be best?

Is there not some sort of alternative such as an adaptor that will transform my monitor-out signal or DVI to an input compatible with a uk tv such as scart, svideo or simple analog? Help appreciated!

[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.

[Davor]

Slightly related question:  I have a GeForce FX card and I have plugged it into my 20 inch LCD TV via S-video cable and the picture is far from perfect.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You can't make it better... it's just that S-Video way of transfering images isn't good enough for text. You need a DVI/Component connector to see a difference.

akirkham, 72.14 is good, but also very buggy. What you did was apply the resoluton, but the effective resolution is 800x600, thats why you scroll to left/right. All you have to do is re-apply the settings and it will be ok, it's a bug probably.

Still, the aspect ratio will not be 100% as it should, but close atleast. VGA manufacturers just seem not to care, and talking about standards here seems to be sorry.

Don't download powerstrip ... it will screw everything up completely. Or try it but make a backup as i did before installing it.

And there seem not to be any good tools to modify the TV output. TVTool was a great tool, but the maker stoped making it since nVidia introduced their NV or MV or whatever TV chip and didn't publish any techincal papers about it.

All in all .. it's a pain to get it work right: CRT TV and PC.

Davor