on-board s-video good enough?

[Scott5]

Hi all - I'm piecing together a pc for sage, one component at a time. I just bought the SOYO "SY-P4RC350" ATI 9100 IGP Chipset Motherboard For Socket 478 CPU motorboard.

(note - seach for this today at newegg and get a huge rebate, i.e. free after rebate!)

After rushing to get my order in before they sold out (i.e damn good deal with rebate!) I noticed that the motherboard INCLUDES S-video out. I had intended to get an agp video card w/ s out, but now I'm wondering...

Is there a chance this s-video out will be good enough to get by with? I'm guessing it's subjective and I'll just have to wait and see, but it'd be great if I could cross the video card off my list.

Thanks,
Scott

[Scott5]

more deals re: on-board video:
Integrated Video ATi Radeon 9100
Supports from 16MB to 128MB of display memory ATi "HYPER Z" memory optimization technology Dual display controllers provide independent dual display support Integrated high precision 300MHz triple 10-bit DAC supports resolution up to 2048x1536 Supports 3D textures filtering and Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA)

[RobDMB]

I too am interested in this and am debating if i should take the plunge and order it.

[TheraEdge]

From what I understand of Sage thus far, that onboard should be fine, as for the SageTV program itself you do not need much in the way of a graphics card as the TV cards do all the encoding decoding. The only reason you might want something more would be if you wanted to run some cool 3D stuff on it like a visual thing during playing music, but sounds like the Radeon would probably even be able to handle a lot of those at the lower TV resolutions.

[Opus4]

I can't comment on the built-in video card in question, but...

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

as for the SageTV program itself you do not need much in the way of a graphics card as the TV cards do all the encoding decoding.

The encoder/tuner cards only perform encoding while recording. The cpu, video card, and/or dedicated hardware decoder (depending on what is installed & its capabilities) do the decoding work during playback.

- Andy

[phenixdragon]

I have a board with the 9100 onboard and it is OK, but if you want VMR to run nicely and stuff you need something with more power. Even the 9600SE ran better then what this board can put out.

[Scott5]

Thanks Phonix Dragon... "VMR"? What's that?

When you said it ran ok, do you mean good enough for DVR / sage functionality on a regular (non HD) television?