I have tried a few Nvidia cards and have not been happy with the s-video out quality of any of them. The latest card I am using is a FX 5200. I am using the 8174 Nvidia driver.

Although I have other issues with tv out, the latest one that is bothering me is the lack of good color. I have tweaked nvidia-settings, but most video looks almost black and white unless I push the saturation way up.

Is this problem driver dependant? Manufacturer dependant? 5200 specific?

I have heard that I might be able to use a DVI or VGA to component converter. Are most of the nvidia washed out video problems specific to the s-video output?

Am I likely to get better video by buying a card from a specific manufaturer?

My airstar 5000 should be here tommorow, but putting an HD signal through poor svideo seems almost pointless.


mike

_________________
KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

the color problems are specific to svid port. I had the best luck using the xv color controls instead of nvidia-settings on my onboard nforce2 video which had the color problems. My FX5200 wasn't so bad, and I'm now using dvi which doesn't suffer from the same problems. Nor did vga -> component when I was using it.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Do you have any pointers to using xv color controls? I only find references that it should be used, not how to use it. Is this just making changes to xattr settings or is there a gui?

I suspect that no matter what I do to tweak the color, it won't be near the quality that I will get with component out. I'll begin shopping for an adapter while I try xv color controls.

Thanks
mike

_________________
KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

in setup tv playback there is a checkbox use xv color controls. once that is checked then when you are watching a recording/tv hit F to bring up the osd controls. hitting F again cycles through the different settings. arrow keys adjust as usual.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Thanks. I'll try it tonight.

mike

_________________
KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

Based on this thread http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=52429 I experimented and discovered that switching to 640x480 really did improve my picture above and beyond the good results I was already getting from my FX5200 based card.

BTW - I'm very picky about color quality since most of the content I'm recording and watching makes poor color reproduction screamingly obvious.

I noticed the same thing tonight. I had recently switched my resolution to 800x600 from 640x480. I did not notice it at the time but that is what was causing my color problem.

Thanks
mike

_________________
KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200