John_Barber Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 Looks like a lot of people have the Nebula DigiTV and have had similar issues to me (losing channels on Autotune) and similar solutions (manually editing the registry) So hopefully someone has done the hard work already for me! I am looking for the best VGA card to use to get composite video output from the DigiTV. Some cards can generate a PAL video "clone" of the VGA screen, or zoom a particular area of the VGA screen, however I am worried that some of these will have issues with interlacing artifacts etc. Any suggestions on the best card to use? Another issue, has anyone ever got Closed captioning working on the Nebula card with version 3.09.x software. It looks like the Nebula card supports the hypertext type teletext in the UK which is different to what we have here. Any Clues? John Barber Melbourne
TigerLeo62 Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 Hi John - it has been said quite often (and written as well) that the ATI cards have a better TV output than the NVidia cards... But other users have commented how the Matrox line of cards have given the best TV output in PAL with no tearing etc... Will come down to whether you want to also play games on your PC as well as have the TV output - the Matrox cards aren't high achievers with games rendering - so if you want to play games as well then perhaps look at the ATI line - if not and you have the bickies, then perhaps go with the Matrox line... My experience with Matrox however is their compatability issues with certain software... PS - follow this thread: http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=170
John_Barber Posted September 8, 2003 Author Posted September 8, 2003 Hi John - it has been said quite often (and written as well) that the ATI cards have a better TV output than the NVidia cards...But other users have commented how the Matrox line of cards have given the best TV output in PAL with no tearing etc... Will come down to whether you want to also play games on your PC as well as have the TV output - the Matrox cards aren't high achievers with games rendering - so if you want to play games as well then perhaps look at the ATI line - if not and you have the bickies, then perhaps go with the Matrox line... My experience with Matrox however is their compatability issues with certain software... PS - follow this thread: http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=170 << Hi John - it has been said quite often (and written as well) that the ATI cards have a better TV output than the NVidia cards...>> Thanks for that. Actually on a closer examination of some of the posts in this forum I found a post on exactly this topic and recommended the G550 card, guess what I already have on my computer? I have not been using it with PAL out, as I am using it as a dual head display, but when I do build my HTPC I reckon now that I'll be sticking with the Matrox. As I am not into games the 3D gaming performance is not an issue. Thanks for your note on this. Cheers JB
aussierob Posted September 9, 2003 Posted September 9, 2003 Hi JB, As the owner of a Matrox G550 card, could you please answer the following: Does the TV-out function of the G550 work full-time to display the PC video output? That is, when switching on the PC (with a TV connected and without a monitor) does the TV display the BIOS startup, booting screens etc? I am thinking about replacing my current Leadtek "VIVO" card with a Matrox G550 to get a better TV image... being that I don't have a monitor on my PVR PC, my new card would need to provide a picture for regular desktop use when not in "full screen tv picture" mode Thanks!
weff Posted September 9, 2003 Posted September 9, 2003 I've also got a Matrox G550 but unfortunately I wasn't able to use it successfully with the Nebula. When I tried using the Nebula for some channels I get the message "Cannot attach to hardware". (7 HD & 9 HD didn't work - but some of the SD channels did.) It may be something to do with the G550 only having 32MB of memory or some other peculiarity of the Nebula software. Others have since experienced the same problem - but with different video cards. I'm currently using the Nebula in my main system (P4 3.0G with Matrox Parhelia 128MB) and that has had no problems with any HD or SD channel. So far I've managed to get the second head going to the video projector - but only with it set as primary display under Windows - there are some sync stability issues I'm still working on at the higher resolutions I'm trying with Powerstrip. I haven't left the second head as primary and booted yet because of the stability issues - and the long term intention is have the 2nd head connected to the projector & the 3rd to the TV. In DVDMAX mode the 2nd head will auomatically take the full HD signal (it does now at some resolution just not at full HD) with the primary monitor still being the desktop display. Regards Geoff
renura Posted September 9, 2003 Posted September 9, 2003 Just in case you missed reading previous posts: Nebula are working at this very moment to implement a detection system which will allow multi-monitor use by just dragging the window across, and the video data will be correctly written to the appropriate display adapter and thus you will be able to enjoy the video on any display.In the meantime, this is what Nebula suggests: 1. You can take advantage of a few advanced driver options on the ATI and nVidia cards which allow video overlay cloning. As such if you go in to ATI's settings and define the second monitor as a simple clone of the primary, and then look through it's advanced overlay options (normally found in display properties -> settings -> advanced -> overlay ) you will be able to enable a theatre mode. Without theatre mode enabled you will just see exactly the same image on both dual outputs. With it enabled you will see the normal desktop on the primary and a fullscreen version of the video overlay on the secondary. Thus if you enable the 'allow MPEG 2 decoding' option in the settings -> display -> only when minimised section of the DigiTV application, you will be able to minimise the application on the primary and then still see the video decoding full screen on the secondary. A similar effect can be achieved with the nVidia GeForce dual head cards, whereby you enable two displays (not necessarily a clone) and then enable video mirroring in their advanced driver options. 2. If you have an nVidia based card you can use the horizontal/vertical spanning desktop modes so that you can simply just drag the video image between both monitors. The vertical spanning might be better as this will allow you to keep the start bar at the bottom of the primary display, move your icons down so they are only on the primary, and then when you want to watch our output on a tv, etc you can drag our window upwards and then it will be shown. I say this because if you use horizontal spanning then you will have a start bar that stretches across both screens (unless you change the side it is docked to) and thus this can be annoying. Hope this is of some help. Cheers
DrP Posted September 9, 2003 Posted September 9, 2003 Aussierob, you can set the Matrox card to have TV out enabled, even in BIOS POST mode, you need to get the latest tweak tool either from www.matrox.com or from www.matroxusers.com. Other than that, if you enable clone mode etc, you will see the card enable TV out as soon as Windows flips to GUI mode. weff, the Matrox G4xx/5xx are not suitable for HD TV out (real HD that it, not $even HD © Mr Kerry Stokes). You'll find you wont even be able to play HD using overlay mode, as the card just doesnt support HD resolutions with overlay. This is why you can't view HD. 1080 x 1440 is just too much. If you are going to use your PC for HD, get a more modern card.
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