PC to TV connection - how best ?

Forums › Home Theatre (incl HTPC) › PC to TV connection - how best ?

pdh

108 posts

Master Geek

# 16340 5-Oct-2007 01:14

Hi - first post to forum - sorry it's a question !

I need help to pick the best PC to TV cabling.

I need to feed a video signal from my PC - across the room to my plasma TV.

I may be giving you too much info here - just ignore the irrelevancies.

Graphics card is a Radeon X1600 (GV-RX16P256D-RH) which has three outputs:

   VGA 15 pin
   TV-Out (which has a break-out box for S-Video or 3-RCA component Y-Pr-Pb)
   DVI-I

The DVI-I output is currently driving my PC's screen at 1900x1200.
I'm happy with that.
The other two outputs aren't doing anything yet.

TV is a 42" Panasonic PV7 plasma (1024 x 768) with three types of input:

   VGA 15 pin
   3-RCA component
   HDMI

The cable-run is going to be tight for 10m cables - easy for 15m.

What would you do ?
TIA

pando

235 posts

Master Geek

# 89600 5-Oct-2007 10:02

IMO, the component is your only option, mainly due to the cable length

illicit

553 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 89802 6-Oct-2007 12:25

I would use the VGA, im currently running a 10m cable with a 2m extension on the end due to being just over 10m. Im typing this right now on my 40" LCD which is 4m away from me and everything is crystal clear and sharp with the text on screen - i use this setup for everything - Media Centre, Internet, Email using a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

In my opinion the Component (3RCA) wont give a sharp enough picture to read text easily.

illicit

richms

22524 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

# 89819 6-Oct-2007 14:53

All the cards I have used have run the component out thru a tv out chip, which scales whatever res to 480i or p, so is useless. I know some newer ones support HD on the TV out, but then it will just add 720p and 1080i to what it can scale to, and then the TV will scale again.

If you use VGA, you should be able to get the native res to the screen, but since you have a 4:3 res panel that is 16:9 sized, everything will be distorted horizontaly in this resolution, whereas if you send the tv a wide resolution it will scale it to the odd sized panel, but it will be softer because of that scaling.

15m vga cables are common as, I would do that, since there is no way that it will get 768 lines on component.

Richard rich.ms

Fossie

1240 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

# 89832 6-Oct-2007 15:43

Vga or Dvi. Component with the x1600 is ok.720p etc, but isn't as clear as VGA or DVI.

pdh

108 posts

Master Geek

# 89904 7-Oct-2007 03:42

Thanks guys & gals - it looks like the winner is VGA.

Does anyone know whether any of the modern TVs (eg: my P7) use the VESA DDC lines to give info back to the video card ? Is
there 'intelligent' communication happening here - or just 'dumb' one-way signal passage.

> since you have a 4:3 res panel that is 16:9 sized

Yeah I know !

I have been struggling to make sense of the way that today's various bits of gear cheerfully scale the picture up & down. All my experience says it's not good to do that to an image... better to move the image at original size and scale it once - if you must - when you display it.

Let's say I start with a 1280x720 (16:9) video - an HD demo file - on the PC. If I could ship that video resolution to the
TV, the TV ought to do the best possible conversion to display it as a 16:9 (rectangular pixel) image on its native 1024x768.

If I ask my video card to output 1280x720 to a 1024x768 device, will it not letterbox or crop it ? Either way, I get fewer useful pixels heading to the TV. The TV gets an image that has been chopped down to 4x3 - and now has to scale it back up to 16:9 - once again throwing away good pixels.

It would seem preferable to tell the video card to send out a 1280x720 signal.

=========

OK, I have just done a lot of reading on the ATI site. I looks to me as though ATI strongly promotes the component connection for HDTV. They seem to have put a lot of work into their Display Manager software - to let me tweak the output via component.

(paragraphs below are extracted from their paper on configuring the card's signal out to HDTV - for the full story, look at

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=18883)

"The HDTV user interface has been significantly modified, making it much easier to select and configure the correct resolution for your HDTV when using the Component Video or DVI connection. The Displays Manager wizard has also been updated to assist users in configuring Component Video HDTV for optimal viewing experience."

"In the Graphics Settings tree, click and expand Component Video Properties > Advanced. Select the HDTV format standard that
your TV supports. In this case, we are using 1080i as an example. 1080i standard (1920 x 1080 @ 30Hz) is selected from the
list and is set by clicking the Apply Format button."

"You may also notice that the Windows desktop fits improperly on the TV. We will now address this by creating a custom
resolution for your HDTV."

"In the Custom Settings area, select the supported modes for your HDTV - either 480i, 480p, 720p, or 1080i. Select 16:9 if
you have a widescreen HDTV."

===========

So now I'm leaning back towards the component solution....