PC to TV

[brewski8809]

Hello, all.

New to the forum. Was reffed by a friend.

Question for you on something that I'm trying to do.

I have an nVidia 8800 GT in my box. I also have a 32 inch Sony tv (CRT) with Composite (Yellow White Red) inputs, white/red audio input and svideo jack.

For testing purposes I hooked up my short svideo card to the TV and it works great.

The resolution is off, however. Can I get a great resolution on my 32 inch TV? Right now I had to adjust it to 1024x760, but icons/font is still a little fuzzy, and some of my games don't play.

Anyone know of a software program for resolution adjusting for a TV?

My next issue is that I already have 2 19 in widescreens hooked up to the computer. (Not right now, while the TV is on).


Will I be able to use all 3 displays? I just bought the following off of monoprice:

PREMIUM 3.5mm Stereo Male to (2) 3.5mm Stereo Female - 7 Inches - Gold Plated

PREMIUM 25FT 3.5mm Stereo Male to 2RCA Male 22AWG Cable - Gold Plated

25FT S-VIDEO CABLE DVD DSS SVHS CABLE SVIDEO M/M

I'm going to run a cable from my bed room to my living room - not all the time - just the times I want to use the TV in the living room to display a movie on my computer (located in the bedroom).

Will I be able to have my 2 monitors hooked up to the computer at the same time as the TV, and will I be able to adjust the resolution on the TV accordingly?

Thanks in advance for the replies - I'm a newb when it comes to this.

 

[brewski8809]

So I got the cables - the sVideo works just fine - can display, and everything works.

The only problem is that the sound won't come through onto the TV. The sound comes through fine via the speakers hooked up to the computer - but not the TV.

I have the Creative Fatal1ty series soundcard, and Logitech 5.1 speakers.

Any ideas?

 

[Paperdoc]

An S-Video cable carries a few video signal components, but NO audio. You need to run also the stereo audio cable from the computer's stereo audio output jack to the TV's two RCA audio inputs - White is Left, Red Right. Set your computer's audio output to 2-channel stereo, not something like 5.1 multi-channel. Or you MIGHT get away with leaving your computer sound system untouched and plugging the audio cable into the Headphone jack on the front of you computer's front speaker pair.

In terms of signal quality (and hence picture quality on the TV), Composite Video is better than a modulated TV channel, and S-Video is somewhat better than that. However, neither is close to what a computer screen resolution is, nor HD TV with HDMI signals, etc. The ROUGH relationship of TV signals to computer screen common resolutions is like:

Regular TV (strong clean signal) 640 x 480 - 480i in HDTV terms
Composite Video a bit better
S-Video maybe 960 x 720, maybe not - that's 720i
Most TV's do not have ANY modes that end in "p" in HDTV terms, although HDTV's do have 720p or 1080p for Component Video signals from a DVD player.
No regular TV's have fast frame rates.

The standard TV signal consists of 525 "lines" of analog data per screen, although only about 475 to 480 of those are actually displayed on the screen; the remainder are used these to transmit hidden digital data. There is no fixed number of dots in one horizontal line of the analog signal, so comparison to computer screen resolution numbers is rough. A TV frame rate is 30 frames per second, always interlaced. That is, a full frame is transmitted as two half frames - the first half contains every second line sent in 1/60th of a second, and the second half frame contains the intervening lines (in another 60th of a second) to fill in. By comparison, most computer displays are sent as progressive scan signals - every line in one frame is sent in order - at 60 to 70 frames per second (double the TV rate), and high-res displays get over 100 frames per second. Moreover, the resolution in both directions is much higher (as I said, common TV signal is similar to 640 x 480i x 30 fps). The very best HD TV systems now marketed amount to 1920 x 1080p x 120 fps.

No TV can do much better than those performance numbers, so no video card will try to push higher-resolution data or higher frame rates out to a TV that can't use it. By the way, 25-foot signal cables can have the effect of reducing the signal quality (and hence detail) at the TV, but you may find the impact small enough to ignore.

Can you use three displays? Not likely. Check the docs on your computer's video card for details. I've seen commonly that a card can output 2 signals at once, such as a DVI to the monitor and a S-Video out to a TV, or a DVI and a VGA to two monitors. If you already have two 19" monitors running, my guess is you'll have to change the video card's output settings to get an S-Video signal to the TV and lose one monitor display. Of course, this can be changed again.

 

[brewski8809]

Thanks so much for the information!

That was very helpful. I will have to change the audio settings to 2 channel - because right now it's set to 5.1 - I'm at work right now so I will try this as soon as I get home.

I tried initially to get the audio to go through my speaker jack, but that didn't work - I will try again with the audio settings changed.

Thanks again!