The main problem I have found with TV out on video cards is "brightness" of the picture. There seems to be a common problem on TV out of Video Cards that they output low amplitude Video signals. The Peak to Peak on a composite signal shouldd be 1 V, all of the Video cards I have tried give aprox 1V P-P unloaded, but when connected to the TV this drops away and leaves you with the dark reddish pictures many people are experiencing.

On the Matrox 400 card I have you can use Matroxset to fiddle with the registers on the card directly and increase the amplitude of the Video out to correct levels. I sadly havn't seen anything similar for the 440mx.

btw, don't be foolled by the brightness control, all that does is to make the blacks greyer, by lifting the black level. It does not increase the intensit of whites. Contrast controls somtimes increase the white level, but not always.

If you cant fix the card through software, one thing that worked for me was to feed the signal through my Video player. I have a JVC s-video model, and that will act as a video amplifier, it equalizes the incoming signal and boosts it to the standard 1 V p-p. The improvement in passing the video through that (or any other amplifier) is remarkable.

If only the Nvidia cards did interlaced passthrough, and were frame aware and allowed you to adjust the video levels they would be great for Myth )

have you tried the new drivers. they are supposed to do interlaced modes, and they have some more controls for brightness saturation etc. through the new control panel. Only issues right now are glx won't work with knoppmyth, and they removed 1024x768 as a valid tvout resolution.

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Yes, I have tried them. Unfortunately although they give brightness control, all the brightness control does it move the black level up, so that blacks become brighter, and more colours/shades are saturated at the "white" level. Unfortunately the white level is set by the maximum amplitude of the Video out voltage, and this is far too low on any of the cards I have. (both Matrox and Nvidia). It is really obvious if you compare the picture from offair with the same through mythbox.

Putting the signal through an amplifier, or changing the maximum white level (on the MatroxCard) gives an excelent bright picture, and the increrase in the luminance changes the perception of an oversaturated colour picture.

If your cards give you great pictures, then good luck to you , but I do nto have a 350 card so I cannot comment. I do have a DXR3 card, and that gives good full amplitude video out, giving a nice clear picture. Shame it doesnt work with Myth

i have a msi mx4000 nvidia card and it does great, no difference on my 60 inch HI def tv compared to normal tv/dvd IN THE Brightness area anyway. Lots of other various complaints with de-interlacing and (rambles list of complaints) but brightness and contrast is great, so i might just be your cards?

have you used xv color controls or any other sort of controls to adjust your brightness or contrast? If not then you are the one an only person I have ever heard of that had an nvidia card that didn't have to. They are always dark and red.

Unless you are using vga and a converter then that's just not the issue we're talking about. This is for svideo or composite out.

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