I recently acquired a Dell 2405fpw and am now looking for an *AGP* *DVI*
video card to get the most out of this monster display. I very rarely play
games, but (aside from business apps) watch DVDs & NTSC broadcasts.

While I understand that the scaling issues involved prevent me from
obtaining perfect fullscreen video (although DVD isn't too bad, even with
the current 9600 pro in the machine...), and even moreso, quality
(fullscreen) NTSC broadcasts, I hope to find a video card that handles video
and the upscaling of video well.

I'm thinking about the AIW x800xt, even though the multimedia software
leaves much to be desired. I suppose I could look for third party software
solutions for broadcast video. I hear BTV4 is pretty good, if not somewhat
cpu intensive.

Also, I've been considering picking up the Fusion 3 or 5 Gold HDTV card as
well (assuming that my area gets a decent amount of QAM channels).


http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/eng/Products/ATSC5Gold.aspx

http://www.digitalconnection.com/Pro...fusion3qam.asp

At any rate, I appreciate whatever suggestions I can get. I'm hoping for the
best quality available for my purposes, as outlined above.

Again, AGP, DVI.

Thanks,
Hark

Specs:

AMD 64 3500+

MSI MS-7025 (NEO2 Platinum)

1 GB DDR Corsair RAM (2x512)-Dual Channel Mode

Current: ATI 9600 Pro, ATI TV Wonder Elite



Dell 2405fpw

The program used to play DVDs has a lot to do with the image quality.

Bob

"Harkhof" <hark (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

"sycochkn" <sycochkn (AT) earthlink (DOT) net> wrote

Yes, I have to agree, but the bigger issue I'm dealing with is quality
scaling to the high resolution without appearing grainy. My hope is that
someone has some experience with the 2400fpw and has come up with solutions
to acheive the best quality possible at this point in time.

The DVD video, although it could be better, is not too bad, but the NTSC is
pretty bad, and that is my greater concern. For this issue, i believe that
software AND hardware will play a role.

Thanks for the response,

Hark

ANy other ideas welcome!

On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:27:37 -0600, "Harkhof"
<hark (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:


Yes, that's why you don't need a different video card (which
will do the same thing), you need a video player software
that does a better job than what you're currently using.

You wrote of a desire for DVI, but that's not going to help,
at most it will make the grainy picture more sharply grained
or at least, you wouldn't see much difference at all.



Best quality possible is video source that isn't resized a
lot, at native display resolution. If it strongly averaged
everything to be rid of grain, then it's blurrier with
artificial grain still from it being an LCD.


What tuner is on the card you mentioned? No reason to
believe the "video card" portion of an AIW makes a
difference here, not when comparing one remotely modern like
what you already had.

Will DScaler work with your current tuner card?

"kony" <spam (AT) spam (DOT) com> wrote

As I previously posted, the DVD video is not all that bad, and although I
agree that the software player is an intregal part of the solution, a video
card that handles scaling well is also desirable. Also, remember, I am
driving a fairly large monitor, and while even my old AIW 9000 Pro will
work, the performance is not what it could be with a higher quality, newer
tech card. I have a 9600 pro in that machine at the moment, which is OK, but
the x800xt does a much better job over all driving this monitor. The
question is not IF I will get another card, but rather: which one? Thus, the
request for recommendations from those who may have found a card that
handles this type of scaling better.


Surely you're not suggesting that I run a 24" monitor in VGA? This display
DOES have a VGA connection, but I wouldn't run VGA when it also has a DVI
connection, nor would I buy a VGA card instead. And there is a tremendous
difference on this display (or any other DVI display) when running it in
VGA. I am actually running TWO machines on this display (along with a KVM
for the mouse & keyboard), one connected DVI and one connected VGA. The "VGA
machine", however, is merely a workhorse machine, for which any monitor will
do, so VGA quality is incidental.

Yes, again, this is a given. However, my hope is that someone who has
already done the legwork for this type of circumstance will step up and
declare their solution.

I've actually tried a few different tuners, of which the current one is the
ATI TV Wonder Elite, which I had heard good things about, but was
disappointed. I also tried this tuner with BeyondTV4, Sage TV and the
Cyberlink Power Cinema that came with the card. The BTV4 showed the most
promise, but in my configuration, it was unstable. The Cyberlink software
was, as expected, pretty pitiful, although it DID offer the best quality.

As I said earlier, I'm considering one of the mentioned HD cards if my area
has enough attainable HD channels). Although I couldn't watch every cahnnel
in HD, at least that would partially solve the problem. HD channels should
do fine on this monitor.


I have to agree, that once beyond a certain point, faster hardware is not
going to help in this area. The AIW on the x800xt, however, was noticeably
better than the 9000 Pro and an AIW 9600xt I had in the machine. Perhaps it
was some minor improvements ATI made upon the tuner (too bad they don't put
the same effort into their software as they do their hardware...).

I don't know. I have yet to look into that, but I hear that it eats up quite
a few cpu cycles, and given that this is a computer I use quite a lot in my
business, I need to be able to multi-task without problems. Have you used
DScaler? If so, what has your experience with it been in regards to NTSC
broadcasts?

Thanks,
Hark

Harkhof wrote:
You will always be limited by the constraints of the NTSC format. It
uses 525 lines of which only about 500 are used for the picture. It
also uses interlace, which computers monitors do not. No video card
will help much in making NTSC signals look good on a high resolution
monitor. It has been estimated to have about 720 x 480 resolution.

The new HDTV signals can have up to 1080 lines, but this requires a HD
television tuner to convert them to a format a PC monitor can use.

--
Virg Wall, P.E.

VWWall wrote:

NTSC can never be that good. 720x480 is best-case for an
anamorphic-widescreen DVD using component-video outputs, which is not
NTSC.

With NTSC, you can get something like 330x480, IIRC.

"chrisv" <chrisv (AT) nospam (DOT) invalid> wrote


Assuming that we're talking H x V, and by "NTSC" we mean the
525/60Hz 2:1 interlaced scanning format using NTSC color
encoding, the best you get in terms of luminance-channel (Y)
resolution is about 440 x 330; you don't get the full vertical
line count due to the interlaced scanning structure (see "Kell
factor" for more). It is somewhat poorer than that (esp. in
the horizontal) in terms of chroma-channel resolution.

Bob M.

Bob Myers wrote: >

The DVD to component analog (YPbPr) case is never afflicted
with composite NTSC limits, other than 525(480v) lines, unless
the source master was composite NTSC.

DVD is 720x480 4:2:0 as uncompressed, although it appears
that other factors may limit the Hres to around 500 "lines",
but in any case potentially higher than broadcast NTSC.

If the player or the display do correct de-interlacing of
adjacent fields into a single progressive frame, I don't
see why you wouldn't, for luma anyway. And YPbPr
supports progressive.

In the context of the basenote, however, the real trick
is finding an AGP, PCI or PCIe video import card that
accepts YPbPr. They seem to be rare and expensive.
Rarer yet, I imagine, would be the same with DRM-compliant
DVI or HDMI in.

--
Regards, Bob Niland mailto:name (AT) ispname (DOT) tld
http://www.access-one.com/rjn email4rjn AT yahoo DOT com
NOT speaking for any employer, client or Internet Service Provider.

"rjn" <email4rjn (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

That's the pixel format stored on the disc, yes - however,
the actual resolution delivered to the viewer will never be
quite this good.

One big reason is that the two fields of the interlaced
frame represent samples in time separated by one
field period, or 16.67 ms; unless objects in the field
are absolutely stationary (and how often does THAT
happen with TV video?), there is an unavoidable loss
of vertical resolution as a result. The assumed "Kell
factor" mentioned previously represents the expected
loss in effective resolution (i.e., not how many lines
you have, but how much detail you can actually resolve)
that comes from all factors in an interlaced system.
For standard television, it is generally assumed to be
about 0.7, which for a 480i format translates to
about 330-340 lines' worth of effective resolution.

Losses along the horizontal axis result from the
obvious (limited bandwidth in the playback and
display systems) and resolution limits in the display
device (such as dot/pixel pitch or spot size in a CRT).
As you noted, the DVD format gives 720 samples/line
in the luminance (Y) channel, but only 360 in the
chrominance; it's a bit complicated to translate that
into a comparable X x Y pixels of RGB sort of
number. For over-the-air broadcast, though, the
system may be assumed to be "square" (identical
resolution, in resolvable lines/inch or whatever, for
both vertical and horizontal), so something roughly
equivalent to a 450 pixel or so RGB image isn't
unreasonable. DVD and over-the-air digital
will also give up SOMETHING to compression
artifacts, although it's hard to predict just what
that's going to translate to - for one thing, it's
content-dependent.


Bob M.