DescentBB

What's up when the s-video output of my dell notebook is blurry, at all resolutions. I think the VGA connector was ok. Is this a case of crapy hardware?

Bad cable?
Incorrect screen frequency?
Try a different TV.

edit: Improper video setting on TV.

it was to a projector and I tried several resolutions, including 1024 (projector native)

Im not talking a little blurry; IM talking like almost unreadable

I can buy a VGA cable, but what good is Svideo if it blws chunks so bad?

its good for TVs. thats it.

use VGA if you can.

S-Video was a good idea poorly implimented. Take Flip's advice

ok cool, new cable

anyone ever play D3 on a wall?

No, but I recently played Smash Brothers Melee on one, and I'd jump at the chance to set up D3 on a projector. Those things are great.

Ned wrote:ok cool, new cable

anyone ever play D3 on a wall?

its crazy. ive played BF on a wall, ive flown FS 2004 on a wall. tried a couple levels of D3 on a wall.

S-video (well, TV-out in general) tends to look shitty on PCs because the output hardware on most video cards is shitty. I noticed a definite different (text was sharper for instance) in hooking my PS2 up to S-Video over composite for example. Hopefully now that MS have jumped on the HTPC bandwagon we'll see an improvement (evidently the quality of TV-out on PCs was a topic of discussion at a recent WinHEC conference).

using s-video output on a video card looks crappy because s-video was never designed for display of high-res images, and neither was your TV

its going to look blurry because you are talking something like 800 progressive vertical lines and mashing them down to like 224 interlaced vertical lines.

The output of the PS2 looks good on a tv because the games are designed with the TV in mind.

If you tried a game using s-video, it probably look damn fine - so would any video, but text will look like crap unless its really large.

You'll only see general improvement of "TV-out" on HTPC on TV's with a higher number of veritcal lines and component or vga inputs.

S-video and composite will still remain the shitty options they already are.

My s-video to my HDTV looks sweet. Even gaming is good.

I agree with flip. From time to time I'll drag my system downstairs and play B1942 (Desert Combat) on the big screen (54" HDTV). Even on that rig, the picture looks pretty good, but the text is blurry as hell. Granted, the output on my GF4 is a vast improvement over my previous GF3 (which was fixed at 800x600 vs. 1024x768 on my GF4), but the text is still blurry.

I've only seen one card with HDTV output. I forgot who made it, but its a 6600GT. The HD output was via a dongle which had a cord running from the back of the card to a splitter which had the connections for a component video cable.

VGA cable: crystal clear
s-video: blurry as heck

MD-2389 wrote:I agree with flip. From time to time I'll drag my system downstairs and play B1942 (Desert Combat) on the big screen (54" HDTV). Even on that rig, the picture looks pretty good, but the text is blurry as hell. Granted, the output on my GF4 is a vast improvement over my previous GF3 (which was fixed at 800x600 vs. 1024x768 on my GF4), but the text is still blurry.

My experience exactly. This includes running DVI from the computer to the TV (51" HDTV). Images look awesome, text is barely readable. Movies are fine, but games aren't. I guess it's just an inherent difference in the resolution of the views. Since movies are geared to be seen on a TV, they'll be set up a certain way, while games are expecting a quality that TVs can't quite provide (at least at the better resolutions).