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Video output look like crap?

post #1 of 13
8/14/05 at 3:13am
Thread Starter 
I hooked up the s video out to a composite adapter that came with my sony vaio to a little 15" tv to see how it would look. The text was unreadable. Is this the way it is with all video outs?
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post #2 of 13
8/14/05 at 3:20am
Nope.
Order of quality of video outputs (best to worst):
DVI/HDMI--excellent, can do 1920x1200+ resolution: HDTVs use this a lot
Component--excellent, also can do very high resolution: HDTVs use this a lot as well
VGA--pretty good, high resolution, some video noise at times
S-video--decent, doesn't suffer the composite NTSC artifacts (dot crawl, etc.)
composite--avoid if possible, not very good quality, and you won't get much better than around 350 lines of resolution, effectively (considering all the signal degradation you'll see plus the effects of combining luminance and chrominance---uh, grayscale detail and color, respectively)
RF/"antenna in"--run away run away! run away very fast! Never use this if you have any choice.


S-video, composite, and (shudder) rf will give you, at best, NTSC (or below) resolution, which is something like 720 x 480---interlaced.
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post #3 of 13
8/15/05 at 6:13pm
Thread Starter 
but it looks way worse then other thingss that are composite
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post #4 of 13
8/15/05 at 7:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nickmpower
but it looks way worse then other thingss that are composite
Yes. The composite output has two bad things going for it: 1) it's got the grayscale and color mixed together, and 2) it's interlaced

Both of these will make computer video look poor. I personally think that the interlacing effects are particularly bad--they make horizontal lines look like they're shimmering, or wiggling. Computer images = very static (meaning, like still-shots), and they can look quite unstable on interlaced video. They are also full of very sharp lines, which really show off the weakness of NTSC video.

I'm sure there are lots of experts around here that can discuss the computer-to-interlaced-video issues better than me, but the above is my take on it.
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post #5 of 13
8/15/05 at 7:39pm
I agree--interlacing (not to mention the low resolution) makes computer video look bad. In addition, it probably seems to look worse than regular TV channels because regular TV has lots of live-motion while the computer video doesn't, plus you're used to the low-quality signal from it--you've come to expect it, while you've come to expect much sharper picture quality from your computer screen...
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post #6 of 13
8/15/05 at 9:17pm
Thread Starter 
well i just tried the s video on an s video tv and it looked almost like a monitor. I wonder what DVI would look like. Im going to be using the computer in a different room, but plan to hook it up in our tv room. we dont have a hdtv yet but should soon because we have a old 24" tv with $1000's of stereo equipment. do you think dvi would be even better? i think most of the quality loss was because of the s video to composite converter wire.
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post #7 of 13
8/15/05 at 11:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nickmpower
well i just tried the s video on an s video tv and it looked almost like a monitor. I wonder what DVI would look like. Im going to be using the computer in a different room, but plan to hook it up in our tv room. we dont have a hdtv yet but should soon because we have a old 24" tv with $1000's of stereo equipment. do you think dvi would be even better? i think most of the quality loss was because of the s video to composite converter wire.
You'll see a HUGE difference.
I've hooked up and played 720 progressive video (and 1080 interlaced) via Windows Media Player 10 on my 9300 to my Hitachi Ultravision HDTV (51 inch) via DVI. Wow! It was spectacular.

And yeah, composite really sucks, while S-video is pretty good for NTSC resolution.
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post #8 of 13
8/16/05 at 1:30am
I've never messed with DVI before - how is the connection managed? What I mean is, I know of DVI-out on on notebooks and desktops, but does the TV require a DVI port as well? Or does it use those green/blue/red connectors? As you can probably tell, I know next to nothing about this..
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post #9 of 13
8/16/05 at 1:43am
Well, a typical modern HDTV set (heh, modern HDTV set) has either a DVI or HDMI port. Both are electrically the same, and simply requires an adapter.
If your set has a DVI input, then you simply use a DVI cable to connect your laptop or desktop or Small-form-factor PC to the set.
If your set has an HDMI input, then you get yourself one of those adapters I mentioned above, and otherwise its the same as with the DVI case.
If your set only has the component inputs (those three connectors--color-coded red, green, and blue) then things get tricky. There are options to make a laptop-DVI-to-component-HDTV work, but I'd rather not go into it--it's a little complicated. And a little expensive.
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post #10 of 13
8/16/05 at 2:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by thorndt
Well, a typical modern HDTV set (heh, modern HDTV set) has either a DVI or HDMI port. Both are electrically the same, and simply requires an adapter.
If your set has a DVI input, then you simply use a DVI cable to connect your laptop or desktop or Small-form-factor PC to the set.
If your set has an HDMI input, then you get yourself one of those adapters I mentioned above, and otherwise its the same as with the DVI case.
If your set only has the component inputs (those three connectors--color-coded red, green, and blue) then things get tricky. There are options to make a laptop-DVI-to-component-HDTV work, but I'd rather not go into it--it's a little complicated. And a little expensive.
Understood, and thanks

Well, I guess I shouldn't even worry about getting a laptop with DVI-out since I highly doubt that I'll be getting a DVI-capable TV anytime in the near future..
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post #11 of 13
8/16/05 at 4:10am
Well...flat-panel, microdisplay, and front projector HDTVs are getting more and more common--and cheaper and cheaper.
HDMI is really common on these new sets...
I bet that one of these beauties will soon be within your price range, if you want it...

BTW: seriously consider a front projector; they are so cool! Imagine watching a high-definition movie that's 8 feet wide...and base models now sit around $1k...though the sweet spot for performance/price is around $1.5k.

EDIT: The base models ususally don't really run HDTV resolutions, but down-scale the video from HDTV res to their native resolutions (somewhere around 800x600 or equivalent). The $1.5K+ models are usually native 720P resolution (1280 x 720). They're nice.
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post #12 of 13
8/16/05 at 5:16am
Yes, I've wanted a projector for a long time now! Unfortunately, prices have always been out of my range (paying one's own way through college = poor)

Someday though... someday...
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post #13 of 13
8/16/05 at 2:12pm
Consider buying a used projecter then. You can get much more for the money that way. Watch out for bulb replacement costs, though.
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