tv-out recommendations

[farmboy03]

I'm really confused about my options for using TV-out from a card other than my PVR-350. The S-video out on my 350 looks perfect, but I want to be able to see the OSD and menus on my TV, so I would like to use a separate card with S-video out. My current card is an AGP ATI Radeon 8500LE, which has an S-video out port, but it forces my desktop into 800x600 mode and it looks like crap on the TV. Can anyone recommend a better (cheap) card to do this? Also, is there any way to have the TV-out playing without changing my desktop settings of 1024x768? I'm running Windows 2000 Professional. Thanks.

[sshapiro63]

Try an NVIDIA based FX 5200 card. They can be found for under $100. Best Buy carries an EVGA brand that uses a heatsink instead of a fan so the card runs quiet.

Load the latest graphics driver found on the NVIDIA website and use the Svideo out of the card to your TV. You probably will need to set the default saturation level (found in the overlay options) down from the defaults of 114 to around 70; at least that worked for me. There is also an adjustment for the image size that lets you adjust Svideo to completely fill the TV screen or to overscan if you like.

I recently migrated from an ATI Radeon 9000 to the FX 5200 and the results are significant. The FX 5200 output is so good that I removed my Xcard and now use the FX 5200 Svideo for DVD viewing as well as SageTV watching. I suggest you use the NVDVD filters as well. NVDVD might come with the card, or can be downloaded as a trial from the NVIDIA website. Earlier today I posted info in the SageTV Software forum on how to configure the filters for use with SageTV.