Report: DVD on your TV with a PC – Tips for TV-Out (4/9) NVIDIA cards with Chrontel 700x (ASUS, AOpen)
Unlike MX boards, the GeForce 2 or older cards do not offer Twin View. This doesn't mean that they don't have a DualView function, though, which still lets you view your sources on two outputs. The catch is that the refresh rates of the two monitors is linked. Since you have to set your TV to 50Hz (PAL or 60Hz for NTSC), your monitor will also start flickering the picture at you with 50Hz. To be on the safe side, you should check your monitor's documentation to check if it supports this refresh rat before changing things. But unless it's a museum piece it's highly unlikely you that you'll damage your monitor. Manufacturers of NVIDIA cards usually use TV-Out encoder chips from Conexant (next page of the review) or Chrontel chips from CH 7002 to 7009. (Chrontel homepage und Chip overview). I explained on the first page how to identify your chip. The NVIDIA tool I mentioned before only supports MX cards and is therefore useless with this class of card. To use DualView and overscan you'll have to enlist the aid of the one of the freeware tools I touched upon in the introduction. In the case of the Chrontel chip this would be TVCC 2000. The program is very easy to use and offers language support for German and English. It has some very thought-out features. You can set a different resolution for each program that uses the TV-Out, for example.
The path is cleared for "frameless" enjoyment of a good DVD on your TV, and thanks to the DualView TVCC offers, you can simply control everything from your PC. TVCC 2000 is pretty intuitive and doesn't require much explanation. The only thing I have on my wishlist is TV-Output at higher resolutions than 640x480 and 800x600. Conclusion: TVCC 2000 saves the day and makes watching DVDs on your TV with a GF2/Chrontel card a real option. On the other hand, you should be able to expect this kind of functionality from cards in the DM 500.- range. At least ASUS is finally offering a tool that lets you overscan the image to fit your TV screen. In its current state it doesn't let you adjust the screen in any way, though. It's still a ways off from offering the kind of ease of use and functionality you can expect from TVCC 2000, though. Unfortunately, the developers of TVCC have decided not to pursue the further development of their tool because of time constraints and motivational reasons. An explanation can be found in the readme:
Cards using Chrontel 700x: ASUS: (Most Deluxe Models): V3800, V6600,
V6800, V7700 The newer CH 7009 and 7011 models also allow resolutions up to 1024x768 and use a 10 Bit output DAC instead of the 9 Bit DAC of the more common 7007. So far I haven't seen these newer chips on any cards, though. |
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Copyright: 19.12.2000 -
RIVA
Station 2000 - Lars Weinand URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/tv-out_dvd_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
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