Best option for TV Display using mini-itx pc

[vambo]

Time to pick the collective brains

I've been using xlobby for a couple of years now with a Mini-itx pc hooked up to a Toshiba 32" widescreen PAL TV (CRT) using the itx's s-video socket. I mainly use it as an MP3 jukebox but have recently started adding movies which I play with zoom player.

Having a wireless keyboard I've tried web surfing but as you'd expect (and anyone who’s tried hooking a pc up to a TV will know) the display is crap and anything above 640x480 is unviewable

I'd be interested if anyone has a working solution. I know realmagic xcard used to be the choice but I can’t seem to find them on sale here in the UK anymore.

Any other options? Is an external scan converter (such as this one http://www.syretail.co.uk/products/Audi ... te_XP.html) a possibility or is there a good PCI based video card with a better TV out than the mini-itx's onboard s-video.

Look forward to hearing you folk's thoughts.

[GFORCE]

You can try and find an ATI Radeon 9200 PCI Card, just the registry hack and use Component Video out to your Widescreen TV.

[milanp]

So far I haven't seen any CRT TV's which have a good (readable) display of text on resolution 800x600 and above when using s-video or composite video input.
The main problem is 50Hz interaced pal.
Last time I tried the display was much clearer when set to ntsc (60Hz) but it was also unusable.
Maybe you should try to increase the default text size in your browser and try .
If your TV-set has VGA or DVI then chances are good that you will have good display quality when using some of those inputs. But DVI and VGA are very rare on CRT devices.

[m_ski]

You'll get best quality output at 768x576 on a PAL SDTV although this will be with overscan. - You will have to shrink the window so it does not fill the entire screen.

Take a look at TVtool which gives enhanced SDTV quality for older Nvidia cards and some support for RGB output which most reasonably modern TV's in Europe will support on at least 1 scart socket. If you are not bothered by 3D graphics speed get hold of an old geforce MX400 or similar with a conexant TV-chip - these are apparently the best. The later ones do not use this chip - they use an integrated chip.

I use a Ti4200 card with TVtool and it is just about acceptable for web browsing use at 800x600. I was thinking about trying Opera which should be able to scale a web page correctly to the window at 768x576.

I have a skin in xlobby which is built off Steven's latest modified to 768x576 with overscan (I had to move everything away from the edges of the screen so it did not disppear off of the edge) so I get best quality when using xlobby and playing movies/pictures.

[Naylia]

Another option would be to upgarde your mini-itx board and processor. The latest boards from Comwell support PCI-E graphics cards!!