tv out questions

[Guest]

Hello.
Sorry for my ignorance, I didn't find what I was looking for in past posts.
I have an older pc (p2 450) that I want to run as a dvd player for my television, as well as for running various emulators.
I want the television to display the desktop, and to be the primary monitor.
I'm looking for something that will provide a good picture for the dvd. I'm not concerned with screen capture or the tv-in functions. I'm also not interested in 3d acceleration.

any ideas?

 

[knowan]

In general the vid cards from ATI and Matrox will give you beter DVD-out than the Geforce series of cards.

Any of the ATI All-In-Wonder (AIW) series would be fine. The AIW 7500 would be great. It has a RF remote control, so that you can leave your PC in a different room from the TV and still be able to pause DVD playback, etc.

All this is making several assumptions. I'm assuming that you have an AGP slot capable of at least AGP 2.0. I'm assuming that you are running win 98.

If you don't have an AGP port, then you may have to go with an earlier AIW (such as the AIW Radeon 32 or Radeon 128) which are still available in PCI. The desktop-out and DVD-out will be comparable to the AIW Radeon 7500, but they won't have the remote.

You can also look into the Real Hollywood DVD decoder by Jaton. It definatly does DVD-out to a TV, but I'm not so sure about desktop-out.

Basicaly any video card with tv-out features will do what you ask. I only recommend the ATI products as they have superior DVD-out. Also the geForce line is capable of either TV-out or monitor-out, but not both AT THE SAME TIME.

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