onboard nForce2 "good enough"?

[Shawn Oster]

I'm currently running a 1.5Mhz Intel box with a PVR-350 in an old hacked together Dell case and oddly enough that beige tower doesn't match anything in the living room *grin*.

So I'm looking at getting Shuttle's SN41G2V2 case+mobo and dropping in an Athlon XP 2500+. I'll then salvage my 80GB drive as well as the 350 from the current eye sore. Since I'd like to get rid of the monitor I figured I'd use the TV-OUT from the onboard Geforce4 MX instead of the 350's TV-OUT so I can use it as the monitor.

How would the quality stack up compared to the TV-OUT on the 350? This is just a straight analog cable signal I'm capturing by the way. Should I invest in another graphics card to do the TV-OUT instead?

Thanks,
Shawn

[sleight42]

Let me guess: you read the Ars Technica Small Form Factor article? That's where I found the SN41G2V2. Already responded in your other post about spec'ing a machine.

I'm curious about the nforce2 as well--particular for non-widescreen use. My Shuttle is going to be hooked up to a 43" HD but I was thinking of building other cheaper boxes to attach to smaller TVs around the house. The nforce2 would chop my price by $130.

[Crashless]

I don't have the Shuttle, but I have a Geforce 4 mx card, and a 350, and can safely say that the 350 is head and shoulders above the videocard out. TV is an interlaced signal, it's not meant to be deinterlaced, and looks FAR better when displayed natively.

That said, I still use the TV out of the gforce for myHTPC playing of divx movies, dvds, and everything else I have coaxed myHTPC into doing, and it looks great after some tweaking. TIP: S-Video is WAY better than composite, if you're TV has the input, use it.

Edit: Also, if you have a 350, why not use it's wonderful onboard decoder? It saves you TONS of CPU cycles. My 2600+ runs at about 3% usage during live TV. Leaves plenty of room for playing games on the monitor while someone is watching TV on the 350. Why pay so much money for a DVR when you can do a little work and make it a HTPC?!?!

[Shawn Oster]

I'm thinking of using the TV-OUT on the Geforce4 simply to do away with my monitor for those annoying times when I need to reboot the system or get to another program other than Sage. I really don't want a monitor in my living room sitting right next to the TV. Ideally I won't have a mouse or keyboard in there either but that assumes 100% rock solid stability.

Maybe I'll do what someone here said, that they swap the S-Video from the 350 to the video card when they need monitor support.

Thanks for the heads up on the quality coming out of the Geforce.