Sony Grand wega Rear projection 42 inch + MediaGate MG25 review + PC Video card ?

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coolvibes

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Topic # 5401 26-Oct-2005 13:05

Hi All
I just bought the sony grand wega in a one off sale at smith city for $2999.99 to replace my samsung rear projection 43 inch lemon. And I must say the picture quality is absolutely stunning even with the low quality transmisions we are accustomed to here in NZ. On SKY (It even makes the living channel look good in wide screen+zoom)

I was playing around with all the settings to work out the best possible quality with my mediagate Mg25 playing some tv shows (lost) from a hdtv source (divx/xvid). I finally settled on the hdtv compnent output 1080i. The quality of the picture was breath taking even from a 40 min rip of 340 meg file size.

The mediagate mg25 has perfect quality from the moment you turn it on you can see the quality of the picture no noise super sound and above all many ways to link to the tv set and it has its own remote control.

For a permenent setup with network capabilities I would recommend the MG35 www.pricespy.co.nz
I purhcased from ascent. I do not think the modix is of as good quality and does not appear to support 1080i

All I need now is a new pc video card that supports HDTV I think I will go for this one...

Gigabyte GV-N66256DP nVidia GeForce 6600 AGP Video Card, 256Mb DDR, 1x TV
Out, 1x DVI, Silent Pipe Cooling (Fanless)

Unless any one out there knows of a simaler priced $250 card of similar quality

chiefie

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Reply # 22067 26-Oct-2005 14:30

my HP m7199a MCE pc that I got 2 weekends ago has GeForce 6600 PCI-E version, pretty good. and support HDTV, as long as the TV support HDMI/DVI input, then the card itself will be able to detect that (via Plug-n-Play detect) and will allow you to select 720p, 1080i or 1080p for that case.

I got Philips 32PF9966/79 LCD with HDMI/DVI support, it also support 1080i/1080p by down sizing to 720p. Anyway, got my MCE displaying using DVI-HDMI (included with Philips) and was great! I have to use PowerStrip to reposition the output though, as it get clipped at the right and bottom. Now it's all good....

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coolvibes

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Reply # 22149 27-Oct-2005 12:38

Hi chiefie
Does the 6600 card support 32 bit color at 1920 x 1080. I don't want you to change your settings just check to see if it will allow you to change it without applying it. The online manual at gigabyte seems to suggest from 1024 *768, only 16 bit color is supported. I will have a look around at other cards with the same chipset.

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Reply # 22160 27-Oct-2005 16:10

most Video cards (if not all) can support much much much higher resolution, especially many of them are 128mb+. so it's no problem for the video card to process that, however, you will need to find the suitable monitor to support such resolution. typically, if you use 23"+ LCD monitor, you should be able to get 1920x1080x32, as to the TV LCD, well you'll be struggle to find one that can natively support such high resolution, the highest resolution that i have seen/read/heard is 1280x720. (or just a bit higher at 1336x756)

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Reply # 23653 22-Nov-2005 10:04

Hi Again
I purchased a pixelview 6600 agpx8 card It came with all the cables required. After lots of experimentation I settled for the 720p rather than the 1080i HDTV setting. The reason for this was the flicker on 1080i was a little annoying where 720p was excellent quality and a reasonable desktop size. The nvidia tools are pretty dam good allowing lots of control over screen size and position. At times the tools seem to be disabled for no apparent reason but then with some tweaking from mode to mode they become enabled again.

My PC does not quite come up to the versatility of the media gate. I think I will always prefer the media gate set to 720p rather than using my pc. just because I have more control over picture size and postion in real time. (PS the PC struggles at 1080i it is a 3.3 gig with 1gig of ram frames are dropped in mpeg2)

Winfast pvr2000 capture card, well I found that recording from tv channels was noisy due to signal quality which is acceptable for small tvs but not 42 inch lcd. I fed the signal from my sky sat box to the composite input and found I was seeing herringbone effects when I expand the picture to full screen. It is not the quality of the sky signal as that has no noise at all when I feed the signal straight to the TV. So After all the effort I am closer to the Ideal but not quite there yet. I will be looking for a good quality Hardware mp4 capture device in the future. So if you know of one post to this thread. I will in the meantime search the existing threads.

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Reply # 23654 22-Nov-2005 10:21

many PAL DVD are 720x575p so if playing at 1080i it needs to upscale which would cause flickery and tearing too...

if you can get hold of WMVHD or HD-DVD they all will be at min of 720p or 1080i/p

but many LCD/Plasma HDTV today are native at 720p and 1080i (which is doubling 540p).

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Reply # 23670 22-Nov-2005 13:48

Thanks Chiefie for the info about tearing that is obviously what I am seeing. I Will pull a HDTV program such as ROME or LOST in 720p from the states for research purposes. In the meantime I will also keeplooking for a HDD recorder that will record in mpeg 4 I know they are coming. Yours looks a bit too pricey for me at the moment.

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Reply # 23677 22-Nov-2005 15:23

hey Sony's RDR-HX1010 is good it has HDMI output too (for HDTV)... though not MPEG4 but it has 400GB and DVD+/-DL support too i think. and intelligent recording (i presume intelligent commercial detection)

i would get that if i don't have MCE :-) i had RDR-HX900

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