my wife and i have just bought our first house, which means we will be moving out of our tiny apartment. since the apartment is so small, the living room corner doubles as my office, which contains my computer, which contains all my mp3s. since we will have a real house with some extra space, my office, computer, and mp3s will end up in a spare bedroom. there goes all my musical entertainment from the living room. enter my wife's old laptop with a wireless NIC.

here is my question. we have a nice new samsung tv with s-video inputs. from my days of researching a carputer setup, i discovered that there are various video converter boxes available. can i get a box to convert from the laptops VGA to an s-video signal that the tv can display? i have an x-10, and despite all the criticism, i found it quite useful especially since you can map buttons to keystrokes in winamp to accomplish playback control instead of using the mouse. i am thinking it will be alot easier and more ascetically pleasing to view the laptop on the tv as opposed to the laptop screen.

any thoughts besides buy a rio receiver or dell or gateway player? :)

thanks,
jeremy

12 gig, green...

Well, I don't know about S-video. I have a device that converts VGA to RCA, and it serves me well.

The thing with these devices, as far as I've found, is that one with a quality output costs a heck of alot of money. Therefore I think if it has S-video, it'll be a device designed for very high quality output, thus costing you a pretty penny.

This is what I am using.

I've used it at parties to output Geiss onto the 45" TV in the living room. Very trippy stuff. You'll find that pretty much anywhere, it costs ~$100.

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

Well, I don't know about S-video. I have a device that converts VGA to RCA, and it serves me well.

Watch out for the supported resolutions claims on these things. NTSC has 525 scan lines, PAL has 625. Anything above that, it has to downsample, often with disastrous results.

No idea how HDTV comes into the picture.

Borislav

No idea how HDTV comes into the picture.

That's the beauty of HDTV: Its input/output format is VGA. An HDTV display is essentially a VGA display with a custom resolution.

With the proper cable (and a custom resolution set up in PowerStrip), I can plug my computer directly into my widescreen HDTV set and have the computer output display directly on the TV screen. There's now a whole group of people who are using a DVD-equipped computer as a Home Theater PC (HTPC) in this fashion. And there are some games (most notably, those based on the Quake3 engine) which have a custom screen size in their options menu, specifically for playing in widescreen HDTV mode.

Back to the original topic: One other possible solution not yet mentioned in this thread is to get a TV-tuner card for the PC. Those are cheap, common, and work pretty decently.

___________
Tony Fabris

Back to the original topic: One other possible solution not yet mentioned in this thread is to get a TV-tuner card for the PC. Those are cheap, common, and work pretty decently.

I hope this isn't too Off Topic, but what players are people using when hooked to the TV? I was thinking of getting some TV out card with a Remote Ir thingy, but the interfaces for most players, such as WinAmp, don't lend themselves to no mouse/keyboard.

Brian H. Johnson
MK2 36GB Blue
"Best to wrap your savior up in cellophane..."

Well, I don't know about S-video. I have a device that converts VGA to RCA, and it serves me well.

Watch out for the supported resolutions claims on these things. NTSC has 525 scan lines, PAL has 625. Anything above that, it has to downsample, often with disastrous results.

Dude, did you read the point of my message? All I was saying is that I hadn't seen an S-video-equipped device, and that it probably wouldn't be cheap. Then all I was saying is that my solution had served me well. I don't really have any problems.

The fact is, your not going to get the same quality as your computer monitor. And really good quality costs a hell of alot of money.

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

Another solution:

Last night I picked up an RCA mm36100 HD-ready TV. It was an open box special that I talked Best Buys into letting it go for $1250. The TV has 2 VGA inputs on the back and is capable of displaying 800x600 resolution. I have a PC in my living room hooked up to it and it is amazing. It blows WebTV and other TV surfing gizmos out of the water. It actually looks like a normal computer monitor. RCA also makes a 32" model with the same inputs..

Cruz Ths

That sounds great! Very cool feature for a TV to have.

By the way, for the people who suggested a video card, would that work in a laptop? I believe that's what he said he'd be using for the setup.

I like my All-In-Wonder card with TV-out. It's given me some good performance.

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

i suggest the x10 mouse remote. like some people have said, the mouse pad part kinda sucks, but for winamp you dont really need it. the x10 software allows you to assign a keyboard key to just about all of the buttons. since just about everything you need to run winamp can be done with the keyboard, you can really use the remote buttons to control the player, not the mouse.

it is also a universal remote which is nice too. all this and it even comes with batteries for about $25. also, since it is an RF device, not IR, it works through walls, floors, ceilings, etc.

jeremy

12 gig, green...

exactly, i have a laptop so i can't use one of those type of cards.

dignan, does the screen look funny displaying on the tv? is the image distorted? what resolution can you run it and still have decent quality? really all i would be using it for is to control winamp so it dosen't have to be that great. thanks for the info.

jeremy

12 gig, green...

I have an Svideo capable big screen tv and I have an IBM thinkpad with Svideo capability. And when I output to it, I can output 800x600 and it is crystal clear rock solid. It's great! On my Toshiba laptap, it has a composite output and I tried sending that signal and it was quite a bit blurry. On my home pc, it has an s-video output from the ATI All-in-Wonder and the output is a little tilted and messy, clearly better than composite but jagged edges and occasional "vibration" occurs.. so YMMV.

Calvin

That's often true but YMMV. :) My IBM Thinkpad which uses an ATI Mobility 128 graphics chipset displays Svideo beautifully. It displays 800x600 at full screen on a TV. It downsamples but the text comes out very sharp, graphics come out great... however, my home pc with an ATI All-in-Wonder displays crap s-video. text comes out badly, when you display 800x600 you have to scroll around....

Also NTSC has 525 scan lines but in practice it's much less than that. 525 is the total including the overscan area behind the frame of the tv to the edge of the tube.

Calvin

Ahh, true 800x600 is nice. I've been doing this for a while with my 27 inch Destination monitor. It's a true monitor, and DVD's on it played via a computer just kick the crap out of the TV in the house. (36 inch Trinitron Sony). But the sound lacks a bit on it, since I only have 2 speakers hooked up, compaired to the 5.1 setup on the TV.

There are outboard converter boxes. But the best place for svideo output is support right off the video card.

Calvin

I have to be honest with you, the output isn't great, which is basically what I was getting at before.

Text at anything more than 640/480 is basically unreadable, which sucks. But if graphical things are being displayed it looks perfectly fine, because you can't tell the difference. As I said, Geiss looks fine.

But if now that I think about it, you're going to be using this alot more than I do, so I'd reccomend you spend a bit more money and go with another solution here. I was just throwing this out to give you an idea of something that's out there.

Good luck!

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

from all these posts, am i correct that i would be better off setting up a machine with an ATI all in one card and just running an s-video output straight into the tv? any suggestions?

thanks for the info so far,
jeremy

12 gig, green...

You don't need an All in Wonder to get S-video out...
I've got an ATI Rage Fury, and that's got the s-video out, without the extra bits from the all in wonder (At the time, I didn't want video in)

I use the s-video output with the ATI software DVD player, and the output quality is great. (Windows text isn't so good, but winamp on double size is fine)

Jazz
(List 112, Mk2 12 gig #40. Mk1 4 gig #30. Mk3 1.6 16v)

I think I'd agree with him. If you really want video-in, so you can capture stuff, get the AIW. I got it specifically because I wanted to capture stuff, so it's workin' real well for me.

I got the All-In-Wonder Radeon. If you go for the AIW, get the Radeon. Definitely. Very Good card.

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

One thing that might be worth looking at is a line booster box for the S-Video out to allow you to position the PC a distance from your screen (so you won't suffer the fan noise and so forth). I can get one here (in NL, for about $50) that lets me run an S-V over a distance of about 15 metres instead of the recommended max of about 1.2 metres.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015