Odd TV out problem:

[siliconjon]

I have a Radeon 7500 with TV out...and if I leave the card plugged into any device other than the monitor, I get the most horrible looking boot up screen, way outta wack. It shrinks to about half height (almost centered vertically), and shifts way off to the left. Easily fixed by not hooking up my VCR until after I boot into windows, but is there a way to avoid this, or is there just not enough umph in that card to diplay properly in those two displays until windows loads the correcting drivers (the S-Video out and my Sony Trinitron monitor are my used displays - could it be the monitor?). I also had a problem with my Voodoo3-3500, as it's TV out could not produce an even legible signal on it's TV out, even the first day she was installed. Is there some info I am lacking to accomplish these tasks properly, or are they just shoddy chipsets/ramdacs?

If I don't get my 90THz AMD Quadraplex system soon, I'm afraid I may just combust right here.

 

[Tiberius13]

My experiences are all with ATI AIW cards (3 generations... an AIW Pro from way back.. the AIW Radeon.. and now the AIW Radeon 7500)

The quirks of using tv-out that I have found are that when you have it turned on, it can warp the display on your monitor. It also only supports limited screen resolutions (800x600 for the Radeon, and a wonderful 1024x768 for the Radeon 7500 - which is my normal monitor resolution so that improvement scores huge points in my books!).

I usually turn off the tv out features when I'm not using it. That prevents any issues that could result from it - period. When I want to use it, I quickly pop into the display properties and turn it on. You can also make a 'hotkey' to do it so that all you have to do is hit CTRL-ALT-<the key you choose> to switch between the 2 modes (monitor only, and tv out) I just started using the hotkey option on the AIW Radeon 7500 and it is sweet!

I haven't tried using it for it's dual desktop functionality... I have just been watching movies/tv shows on the tv while continuing to surf or work on the computer. The AIW Radeon 7500 is absolutely amazing! The 8500 would probably have me drooling so much I'd drown!