On a different subject, if I'm going to pay for all this picture quality and size, it justs makes sense to me that it would be cool for the t.v. to work for my P.C.. The information I have now says that only Plasma and LCD HDTVs work with PCs, and even if the others (ie directview, rear projection, etc...) have a DVI or VGA connection, that doesn't mean that connection works with a P.C. Anyone have information on what T.V.s can work as a PC monitor, the equipment needed, and which eqiupment actually gives you a good picture, ie equipment that doesn't use some lousy adapter that doesn't really give you the quality that a plamsa hdtv gives you connected to a P.C.
I have hooked up my AccessDTV card to a Mitsubishi RPTV before. I had to get a 15 pin VGA to BNC cable and then BNC to RCA adapters but it worked on both my Mits and also a SONY 55" at the office. The component inputs must accept 1080i. On the Mits, not all component input go that high.
I'm typing this on a PC connected to a Toshiba 55" HD-RPTV. An HDTV tuner card in this PC also supplies HD signal to it.
In order to do this with many HDTV sets that only accept component input you need a RGB->Component transcoder such as the Audio Authority 9A60 to connect them to the VGA output of your computer. This or other brands are available for about $125.
ANY DTV set with digital connections can work with a PC, to the best of my knowledge. All you will need is the way to make taht connection. For most combinations of equipment that will be an RGBHV (also known as a VGA connection) to Component Video transcoder. That'll take a VGA cable and , in effect, turn it into component video. Most RCA and several Zenith sets (that I know of, and I am sure there are others) may also have an RGBHV connector on them, so all you would need is a standard VGA monitor cable. Although those sets may state that that connection is for a specific computer resolution, I have found that in reality any of the TV's modes can usually be driven from there. All you need is a little program called PowerStrip that allows you to set-up custom timings on your PC that tells your PC how to send that video signal in standard HDTV formats.
Another big plus here is that DVD players for computers are cheap and the nature of this connection means you are looking at a progressive scan DVD player and PowerStrip also turns your PC into a scaler. (I tend to watch DVDs scaled out to 1920x540p). Most HTPC afficianados seem to prefer using either one of the newer Radeon cards (7500 or 8500) or a GeForce card since these provide both good performance and they work fairly well with PowerStrip for the custom resolutions.
I highly reccomend you check out http://www.avsforum.com and look int he Home Theater PC forum for LOTS more info on integrating a PC with an HDTV.
The Sampo SME-34hd5 34" direct view monitor has an RGB input which can connect directly to the video output of a PC. Supposedly, this set has a computer grade CRT for best linearity, resolution, etc. The set also has two component inputs and two S-video inputs. And the HDTV pix are great!
Thanks for you help, and I have read much more on avsforum since posting the question. Ok, what about this. As we know, T.V.s are out now with DVI connections and pc video cards have DVI, but I haven't heard of any T.V. that the manual says the connection won't work and/or the connection actually doesn't work. Is there a directview or rear projection that has a DVI connection that is meant to be hooked up to a computer (ie. someone has read the manual and also seen it work well like it should)?
Yes, I finally hooked my PC AIW Radeon to my 51" HDTV Sony
Connection was made by a DVI-D dual link cable that I got from ramelectronics. It works good,you can see every pixel clearly.
That's why I'm asking all over if the DVI-D input is compatible with the DVI-D output of my geForce4 card. Seems like a standard should be, well, standard.
I can understand that Toshiba doesn't want the headache of trying to explain to people how to change resolutions on their PC's to work with the TV. Plus they don't want the warrenty liability if someone fries the TV from pumping in too high a frequency signal or something wacky like that.
I mentioned this in the other post where you asked it, but I see no reason why you couldn't. Toshiba probably doesn't want to deal with it for the exact reasons you mentioned, and that's probably the only reason they might say it's not for use with a PC. Unless there's something completely out of whack with these DI interfaces that I just don't know about, which is entirely possible since I don't have a DVI connection on my current set to try it out for myself.
Hey guys, if i connect an HDTV to my pc via the ATI 9700 Pro card, and in the video settings i can set it to 1080i, would i still have to use PowerStrip?
Any help appreciated
You wouldn't necessarily need PowerStrip, depednikng on what the ATI display driver can give you. However, Powerstrip does provide some extra capabilities to put timings inside of other times. A good example of this this is that 1920x1080i is not a "standard" computer resolution, and many games do not support it.
If you wanted to display 1024x768 instead, your computer would not know how to do that on your TV and it might send incorrect, and possibly harmful, timings or it simply wouldn't have that resolution available at all. I haven't seen the newer ATI panels for the 9700 so I don't know if it will next a 1024x768 window in teh timings of a 1920x1080i resolution, but PowerStrip most certainly will.
The only other utility I knew of that would handle this kind of situation was the one normally used by Matrox, but no other manufacturers have bothered to add something like that with their drivers.
Is there a problem with using PowerStrip? It's pretty easy to use and it's free if you only are using it for customized timings. I also find that the creator, Ashley Saldana, is far more responsive to support issues than virtually any other product I've every used. Definitely a worthwile product, IMHO.
I have be successful in sending PC to HDTV (Toshiba 42HDX82 RPTV) using a NVidia GeForce2 Mx400 video card with tv out via s-video feature at only 640x480 at 60HZ. it appears that 800 x 600 at 60Hz outputs ok too, but I cannot see any real difference on the tv. Perhaps the tv unpconverts only to 540p when faced with any s-video input regardless of my settings-or s-video cable at 400i is just too restricted to transmit the higher res anyway. I also tried to use powerstrip for custom res but never got it to output anything but a garbled image on the TV. Perhaps my older video card does not care for powerstrip or powerstrip is designed less for PC to Tv cards and more for using the vga to component convertor.
Any thoughts?
Well, I use my PC straight to my HDTV with a standard VGA cable. That S-Video connection probably only outputs 480i, simply doing a downconvert of the 800x600 resolution to 640x480i, which is a fairly common situation for that type of output.
My guess if you just don't ahve to right timings set up in PowerStrip for your set for that VGA connection. Try to get it to work, as it is definitely worth it. Ask Ashley if you need some more help at the PowerStrip support forum at http://pub28.ezboard.com/fentechfrm5 and see if he can help you out. He's very responsive.
This was a top requirement for me when selecting a HDTV. Research is important here because both systems, PC and HDTV, must have the require connections and capability.
Connections can be misleading. Some HDTV monitors have 15-pin (VGA) PC connectors but can only handle the lowest PC resolution; 640x350, 720x400, 640x480 and maybe 800x600. This normally requires you to switch to one of these low res selection on your PC which most never use (unless for vision accessibility reason). So you end up scrolling constantly because of the reduced amount of info that can be presented at these low res setting. And who wants to pay to put a small view on a big screen anyway.
Make sure the HDTV monitor's PC input can display the higher resolutions most user currently have setup when viewing at the PC monitor itself; such as in my case 1024x768, which is moving into the SVGA high-end and XGA low-end setting of most PCs. If you have to keep changing the PC res settings to view on the HDTV monitor your will not use it, plus this keeps rearranges your Windows icon layout, what a pain. Another thing to watch for is the frequencies it can handle at the selected resolution. You don't want the annoying screen flicker you get at 1024x768 with 60Hz; look for other select able frequencies such as 70Hz or 72Hz. Some get headache from the flicker. Don't plan on any Picture-In-Picture on the HDTV side when viewing in "PC mode". I didn't find any that could handle this; it wasn't that important with me any how.
Additionally, on the PC side of things it's nice when your video adapter has dual output, can drive two monitors and has an "easy way" to switch between your viewing modes. Modes such as when in clone mode, your PC displays the same image on both monitors but the video player image, be it DVD, VCD, PC TV-Tuner or the streaming video your watching doesn't appear on both (PC software players using DirectX, an overlay issue). Having an easy way to swap primary and secondary monitor makes it possible to move the screen with the working video to the HDTV monitor for the big screen viewing while retaining PC control at the PC. Even better yet is being able to control the viewing modes some how using a remote control or wireless keyboard and mouse; now that's almost heaven.
I've been very happy with my selection of the Samsung HLN437W DLP TV. Weighing in at only 67 lbs, this 43 inch (wide 16:9 format) is only 16 inch deep. Has both a 15-pin XGA PC monitor input and a DVI input. Along with 2 sets of component inputs (480p/720p/1080i), a third component input that is only 480i/480p for DVD player, 3 sets of standard Video/Audio inputs, 3 S-Video inputs, and 2 coax antenna inputs. An extremely important detail this monitor has is when you adjust the video inputs they are set for that type of input. Some monitors require re-adjustment (brightness, color, format, etc...) when the viewing input source is switch, a real pain.
On the PC side the important component was the selection of ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro. This video adapter is loaded with features; dual monitor outputs, standard TV/Cable/FM tuner, software PTR functions, video editing hookup for camcorder and VCR and the Pro adds a RF remote control for controlling the TV-Tuner function and the PC mouse actions. All this requiring only one slot and a USB port, in my case the AGP slot. So far or at the time the newer AIW versions didn't support dual monitors.
The only problem I've seen so far is when I have the PC display up on the HDTV set there is a slight distortion in the overall display shape (trapezoid) along the side edges. After a minute of viewing it does brother me (it's still there, but not a annoyance; like the fine line across some PC monitors, it there but you wish it wasn't, at least it's on the sides not square in the middle of the viewing area).
