OK, I have been reading about this for a few hours now, and I am not seeing anything, so maybe this isn't an issue, but I thought I would ask the kind people here before I purchase anything-

I am strongly considering purchasing the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350, based on what I have read on this, and other sites about the product.  I am going with the 350 because I do intend to use the TV-OUT  primarily on a big screen, 51' projection television, either through composite or svideo connections;  I will be using it in this manner more than viewing on the computer monitor.

I currently have a card in my computer with S-Video TV-Out, which according to the device manager is an NVidia GeForce MX 420.

Now, I am trying to test, to the best of my abilities, the quality of a regular television program would look on my tv, out of the NVidia S-Video outputs.  I found some mpegs, and downloaded them to substitute for the captured video, and they look pixelated in Media Player, before even playing them out the S-Video.  I have also seen setups where people are using a TV as a monitor, and things like the Windows desktop looks totally terrible.

So, my questions are:  Is this NVidia card capable of providing quality signal to my large projection TV (I'll be watching a lot of sports!)?  Second, is there ever any issue with the picture on the television being all pixelated, as if you were looking at the windows desktop?

Oh, here's my other pertinent system specs:

Dell Inspiron Pentium 4 - 2.4GhZ
128Mb Rambus RAM  (prolly need to upgrade this, I know...)
200GB 7200RPM HD

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Peace-
Andrew
(Ann Arbor, MI)

 

Unfortunately, unless you're recording HDTV, everything on your big screen is going to look pixelated -- especially Windows desktop.  TV resolution is very low which makes static images look terrible.

TV does have a smoothing quality, however, and IMHO, TV shows look better on TV than on a computer monitor (the sharpness of a computer monitor reveals all the flaws of the low-res TV signal).

One thing you might want to be aware of, is that AFAIK you can NOT view the Windows desktop through the TV-out of the 350.

I did a little test yesterday with my PVR.  I turned on the All-Star game and flipped the input signal from my PVR to cable and back again.  Personally, I thought the signal coming from the PVR looked BETTER than the direct cable feed.  Quality is always subjective, though.

FWIW.

Heh,  well there are competing/conflicting entities clashing here.

let me try and break it down.

1. watching analog standard TV on your PC monitor looks funny... it's not pixelated persay, but too sharp and pixelated is kinda the best way to describe it (if that makes any sense) --- but it's not like bad encoding artifacts, it's just the PC monitor is a higher res than the source material...

2.  Since a TV has scanlines and is lower resolution: the TV signal looks fine (the smoothing effect mentioned)  it blends and looks, well like TV...    this is also why a windows desktop looks like junk on a TV screen (but computer games will look fine... PVR software menu's look fine, because they were designed to be displayed w/scanlines/interlaced/etc...)

3.  On a large screen (lets leave hidef out of the discussion), generally, as the picture gets bigger the pixels (or in TV parlance what are they called?), or rather how noticeable they are...

4.  There are other contributing factors to pixealation... how it's encode... which MPEG decoder you use can effect quality.

.... For a better test, than some mpeg you downloaded... try to play a DVD through your PC via your nvidia svideo out on your big screen.  See how that quality is...

hope that helps and let me know if you need clarification or have other questions...

good luck!

rampy

Sorry to keep bothering you, but should I interpret this as saying that regular tv, (analog cable) recorded onto my machine, and played out the TVout of the 350, (or out of the Nvidia card I already have)  if all is set up correctly, and the drivers are correct, shouldn't look all pixelated?

I don't really care about the OS showing up nicely on the TV, I would just like to be sure that the picture will be ok with my recordings!

Thanks for your time, again!

Peace-
Andrew

It is not HiDef - just widescreen.  

I did read your review of the 350, which is one of the main reasons I am strongly considering the product... I tried to be a self-educating n00b, instead of just rolling up and asking questions right off the bat. I also like to test things out before asking questions- I am in a number of audio recording boards/groups, and people will ask a question that they could easily answer themselves by just testing, and it kinda perturbs me, so I wanted to make sure I didn't just bomb you guys like that.

I think I am going to try the 250, and use my existing TV card, and see if that works.  First of all, its cheaper, and second, they have it at the local Circuit City, so I can just go purchase it, test it/try it, and if it doesn't work well, I can take it back, for no money loss.

I am actually thinking that I might be able to test what I downloaded, now that I think about it- you were saying that TV generally looks bad on computer monitors- maybe that is the 'pixelation' that I am seeing, because the monitor resolution is so much higher than TV- when I run it out the TV-Out, it might 'smooth it out' a bit.  Unfortunately, I don't have a DVD rom, so I can't try a dvd...

well, for the nth time, thanks for your help, and let me know if you see any major holes in my plan- I will report how it goes, cause I think I will get a chance to try this tonight.

Peace-
Andrew