Media centre..

[godinman]

So i've got a fairly old shuttle pc which i want to put on my tv, got a pci slot and an agp slot, and some onboard graphics with both a vga and svideo out.

Thinks its got an old 1.8amd cpu with half a gig of ram.

Have tried the svideo out off the motherboard and its fairly rubbish. Can't make out text etc, anyone got any ideas about a low cost agp graphics card?

And is it possible to get a good output onto my tv? Its not an lcd, its a 32" flatscreen, but the oldstyle fatass crt type.

Am hoping to get a 500gig on a caddy so I can transfer easily from my main pc.

Thanks ppl

 

[Darkwave]

I think you'd still get horrible output to your TV for reading text even if you put a graphics card in there. CRT TVs just don't have the pixel resolution for it unlike a HD LCD.

 

[Snakedoctor]

I have only just been able to fix the blurring on my TV crt with the latest drivers from Nvidia, 174.xx versions. depends on the card as to if you can install these drivers, but I doubt it. I had a 7800gs on agp which I think you can find quite cheap these days. You can set the flicker filter in the 174 modded drivers which makes it more readable.

 

[godinman]

I see what you mean about the resolution Ulfhedjinn, but i can see text fine on dvd etc, so should i be able to get a good picture with a proper input off a graphics card? or is there some incompatibility issues between pc and tv?

Which card are you using at the moment Turophibic? Im looking to do this on a budget if possible, was looking to spend under £50, would a 7300 gt do a similar job? not sure what sorta graphics power is needed to run dvds.

thanks guys

 

[Darkwave]

I see what you mean about the resolution Ulfhedjinn, but i can see text fine on dvd etc, so should i be able to get a good picture with a proper input off a graphics card? or is there some incompatibility issues between pc and tv?

With the PC output you're probably forcing a resolution like 1024x768 as opposed to the 720×576 of a DVD, so it probably introduces some scaling issues or something. Windows text always looked hideous when I tried it on a CRT TV.

 

[godinman]

Well, darn. Am borrowing a graphics card off a friend. Have a scart out, and some sort of 'tv' mode in the software.

Shall try that, worst comes to worse i'll just have to buy a 40" lcd

Thanks for t helpys

 

[Darkwave]

Aye it's at least worth a try either way. I hope you get it to work properly.

 

[godinman]

I put the resolution down to 800 by 600, increased my onboard graphics to 64meg in the bios and put BIG fonts on, and it sorta works. Dvds play okay, tho a bit jerky..Think this graphics card tomorrow shall possible solve all my woes. 'optimism'