Re: Re: [ADVERT] Price drop on Black Gold Freeview TV Tuners and MCE Starter Kits

[Phil Harris <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

gigtekmediacomputers wrote:

>Quick answer is no.
>
>The longer answer is that it is possible to get a VGA to SCART cable
>from Keene Electronics that works with some ATI graphics cards and can
>drive a standard TV SCART socket.
>
>If you fancy making the cable up yourself or want to see how its done
>look here: http://ryoandr.free.fr/english.html
Please read the
>warnings as well as there does seem to be some issues.
>
>You can also use Powerstrip to tweak your output to closer match your
>analogue TV. This can produce acceptable results within the MCE
>interface but not in Windows mode.  More on PS here:
>http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm
>
>Main issue is that we are all used to high resolutions on our PC
>displays 1024X768 as a minimum. If you switch your PC back to 640X480
>(nearer to TV standard) you would find that it is pretty much unusable
>for most things.
>
>Not sure if this helped much, perhaps I should have just left it at
>NO!!
>
>S.
>
>
Hmmmm ... I'm a bit anal on image quality (I think that's a tad of an
understatement) and Li (from Laser.com) and I went over to have a bit of
a session at an even more AV obsessed friends place with a network
attached DVD player that he's doing a bit of a project on.

Anyway, after whacking through God knows how many test discs and
comparisons with a few other DVD players that we had lying about we had
a set of notes to send off to the manufacturers for a few more things
that we wanted changed before we consider it finished and then settled
down for a good old natter.

One of the things that came up was that my friend had started using his
PC as a PVR (using the Nebula cards and not MCE) which suprised me given
that he had always been (same as me) very scathing about the output
quality from PC graphics cards. Thing is he showed me the output from
this 6600 card via S-Vid into his CRT projector (he has a 9" tubed
Sony
whereas I only have a couple of 7" tubed NECs so his is better for us
to
test kit on) and it was *REALLY ACCEPTABLE* - I was suprised as hell!

If you are interested and can get over to Winchester I'll have a chat
with my friend and see if he'd be OK with us visiting and taking a look
(he's a bit of a recluse I'm afraid).

Phil