S-Video looks terrible on TV

stackeye

Hi

I have been upgrading an old work pc (HP D530) to run as a Media Center, I already have a Media Center PC that works great, Its a very old machine and runs XP MCE fine, I am using the HP pc to run Vista MCE, I have the OS installed and running fine, I purchased an Geforce FX5200 with S Video out, but when I have tried it on 2 TV's using 2 different cables it looks very distorted, you can see little boxes, I took pictures and uploaded them here,

I understand that this graphics card is not suited to vista but is there some other thing I should be looking at? is there a program that will fix this distortion, I get TV settings in the Nvidia Control panel, I have it set to S-Video and Ireland i/Pal as the Region, there are no more settings,

I have tried it on a PC with a VGA port and the picture looks perfect, well perfect except that it has massive black bars around all edges, it will not fit the screen, I think there is a program that can fix this but the TV it is for has no VGA port,

Any Ideas on where to go next,

The reason I got the 5200 G card is cause the HP is extremely underpowered and doesn't have a PCI-e slot, and only a low profile AGP slot

karltimber

have a look at my thread here - possibly similar situations.

I should get my new lead tomorrow, which should sort out the problem.

K

stackeye

Hi karltimber

I see what your saying, I have a DVI port on the graphics card and a HDMI port on my TV but the TV i will be using this MCE with only has scart, I have a s-video to scart connector that I will use, cheers for the help - maybe in a few months I will move it into the front room with the new TV - but the family aren't keen on technology so what can you do

subway

svideo only handles up to 576 interlaced lines so is no use for computer text.
when you switch to a crt tv that matches that resolution you will get a better picture, but still have difficulty reading text

stackeye

Subway

I am using it on a CRT for playing movies and DVD's only, I wont be using it for reading text, I understand the resolution issues with CRT's but the picture is much worse than that, I couldn't watch a movie with the picture quality as it is,

subway

the picture you posted up show a sony bravia.
i dont think thats a crt.

crts are designed to display interlaced images so you wont get the "every second dot is grey" effect that you are seeing on the lcd.
thats effectivly what interlacing is -
2 images dispalyed at half resolution, over s video that would 576 / 2 = 288 lines.
they refresh qucikly between them and your eye sees one full image.
crt can do that but lcd cant.

subway

just to add, the interlacing, much more so than the resoltuion, is causing the issues here (i believe)

mathias

2 images dispalyed at half resolution, over s video that would 576 / 2 = 288 lines.
they refresh qucikly between them and your eye sees one full image.
crt can do that but lcd cant.

LCD's and Plasmas automatically de interlace the picture and show a progressive image , which should be a better picture , so flat panels are inherently better at handling interlaced signals.

That is not the issue here , the problem is most likely down to the way the s-video /scart lead is wired , Scart was never meant to carry S-video so while there are many ways to do this they are all " hacks " and only one of them will work properly with that card and TV combination. So change the lead is the way to go.

From the wiki ,

Both S-Video and audio (mono or stereo) signals can be transferred through SCART connections as well. However, it was not part of the original SCART standard, and not every SCART-compatible device supports it for this reason. Also, S-Video and RGB are mutually exclusive through SCART, due to the S-Video implementation using the pins allocated for RGB. Most SCART-equipped televisions or VCRs (and almost all of the older ones) do not actually support S-Video, resulting in a monochrome picture if such a connection is attempted, as only the luminance signal portion is usable. Generally, a monochrome picture in itself can also be a sign of incompatible colour encoding — for example NTSC material viewed through a PAL-only device.

A "hack" exists to possibly attain colour on devices that do not support S-Video through SCART. This is done via joining the pins 15 and 20 in the SCART connector (either directly or using a 470pF capacitor), but may not yield optimal results.[1]

A similar hack also allows colour. This connects the Y and C (3 and 4) pins on the S-Video connector.[2]

Yet another method is to cut the cable. This reveals an outer shielding wrap of wire over an inner insulated core. It is the two inner core wires that need to be connected and with care this can be done without having to cut the outer shielding, though the shielding cannot be replaced. This method has the advantage of not requiring any soldering as the wires can be simply twisted and then covered in insulating tape to isolate them. The exposed shielding can also be twisted and covered in tape but these are done separately and not joined together.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Video

Experience tells me that one of the above combos will give you a decent enough picture , but you will probably need to disassemble the scart and have a look at what wires are connected , also check whether or not the scart input you are using is RGB , at least one of the combos above requires that it is an RGB input.

stackeye

Strange one

I used a s-video to composite(the yellow lead) converter and that seems to have improved things a good bit, its still not perfect colour but it will do, I dont really understand it but what can you do, thanks for all the help everyone

Word of advise - dont use an old office pc as a Media Center pc, well not if you want it to run VMCE anyway,

I might have to roll back to XP MCE, for one the fan is constantly on with the FX5200 in Vista and the graphics are jumpy, I had put in a new Zalman fan that made the PC pretty much noiseless but now its very loud,

SouperComputer

long story short, an FX5200 just wont cut it with vista. The drivers plain suck which is the main issue rather than the hardware limitations of the card itself

For MCE2005 however the FX5200 is perfect.

I have Vista ultimate running here on a P4 @ 3.6/1Gb RAM and it runs sweet as a nut, but i'm also running a 6800GT. The trick is to have a half modern (not neccacarily high peformance) graphics card and a HD with a good throughput. Makes all the difference. This machine will will be moved up to core2 circa 2.8Ghz/2GB in a couple of week but not really because of responsiveness as such, but its going to be running at least one virtual machine and dealing with more transcoding for webguide.

Your best option would be to spend a little more and get a graphics card that supports component out. Double whammy, decent drivers and a good quality output.

stackeye

Hi SouperComputer

I recently installed Vista Ultimate on the HP pc, instead of a rating of 1.0 with premium, I now get a 2.0 and Aero works with the FX5200, I even have the colour perfect on the TV but when I go to play videos it wont work, they will play in the monitor then I pause them and move the video across onto the TV and press play but no dice, when I run MCE on the tv and then close it down it says I need more that a 64meg graphics card even though I have a 128,

I have given up getting it to work of Vista, I reinstalled XP but now the graphics card is stuck on NTSC (black and white), it wont display any regions or signal formats, I am stuck with NTSC, I changed my region settings in Regional and Language options - restarted and still no change, it has replaced NTSC with nothing and there is no change on screen - It is just black and white, I got all the regions in Vista but im not getting any in XP, I have used the drivers that came with the card and then with the latest ones from the Nvidia website and its all the same, I cant find anything on the internet about it, have you come across this before?

SouperComputer

ive only glanced at your post, ill get back proper at some stage.

In the meantime, download TvTool.

stackeye

I have done a complete reinstall of MCE, setup my PC as an Irish PC in the Language and Region settings and when I installed the FX5200 it is now showing as i/pal, it still wont work with s-video even though it knows i am using it, I have to attach a svideo to composite converter for the TV to display a good picture, Am i losing alot of picture quality using composite?

dc69

a tiny bit,tbh if you are using a crt then composite is probably the best you will get,i dont think you will ntice much of a differance between it and s video,media centre pc's are pretty much wasted on crt

SouperComputer

stackeye wrote: »

I have done a complete reinstall of MCE, setup my PC as an Irish PC in the Language and Region settings and when I installed the FX5200 it is now showing as i/pal, it still wont work with s-video even though it knows i am using it, I have to attach a svideo to composite converter for the TV to display a good picture, Am i losing alot of picture quality using composite?

Your regional settings have no effect of the TV out on the card. The is a difference of night and day between Composite and Svideo IME, even on a CRT but it depends on how fussy you are and big the screen is.

You might need to grab some MCE-specific driver. Nvida used to ship them with extra goodies for MCE.

Have you used TvTool? Might have saved youa reinstall.