[mythtv-users] MX440/Radeon wars (Was: Hardware ideas)

[Clyde Stubbs]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 02:49:48PM -0700, Jarod Wilson wrote:
> Hold on just a sec... One person's FUD-spreading about nVidia cards shouldn't 

With all due respect, I wasn't spreading FUD, just offering advice based on
my own experience. If I come across as somewhat enthusiastic in my endorsement
of the Radeon cards for TV-out, it's simply because I originally bought nVidia
based on what I read on this mailing list and other places, then spent several
months battling with broken drivers, and generally being disappointed with
the quality, all of which was fixed with the outlay of a very small amount of
cash and a little work.

> quality video on a TV hooked to it via SVideo. The difference in quality 
> between a PVR-350 and my GF4 cards is fairly miniscule.

I haven't seen the output of a PVR-350 so I can't comment, all I can tell you
is that the S-Video output of a Radeon 9200SE is vastly better than the nVidia
MX440 (I've tried both the nForce2 integrated video and an AGP card). By
vastly better, I'm referring specifically to the video bandwidth, which
shows up as a much cleaner, crisper image. I should mention that I'm using
DVB-T tuner cards so the original image quality is very good.

I have no doubt that using a good quality RGB->S-Video converter would
do as well or better, but they cost more than the video cards.

> folks. And for the second time, the TV encoder on a GeForce card DOES 
> interlace the signal for output to a TV, just like the Radeon does. The 

Sure, the TV-encoder will interlace the output - but the interlaced output
support in the nVidia closed source drivers has been broken for a long, long
time. The 4363 driver you recommend does not support interlaced output.
I think the last nVidia driver that had working interlace was 3123.
If you attempt to choose an interlaced mode with the later drivers you
get the "bad mode clock/interlace/doublescan" error.

It does work under Windoze, so it's not a chip problem, just a driver problem.
And the open-source nv drivers don't have good support for TV-out, and
have dismal performance.

> better with timings than the GF4s. I'm curious if you have deinterlacing 
> turned on in your setup...

Yes, I do. I'm not trying to deal with interlaced video *sources*,
I simply need interlacing because my TV does not handle horizontal
scan rates at the 31.5kHz or so needed for progressive scan.

The impression I get is that this might not be a particularly common
problem - certainly all those people happily using
nVidia closed source drivers and TV-out must have TV's capable of
progressive scan. One day I might too...

> So is that PAL 50Hz interlaced via SVideo, or some other type of connection? 

Yes.

Cheers, Clyde