Monday, August 29, 2005

TV on the Desktop:

I was thinking of installing TV tuner card (or some other way) on my home desktop. After lot of discussions and confusion, I selected ATI Wonder Pro (whats Pro, I am not able to find.. may be just a upgrade from earlier version).

http://www.ati.com/products/tvwonderpro/features.html

But eventualy I ended up upgrading my graphics card too. I selected Radeon 9550SE 128Mb graphics card, ATi PowerSpec RADEON 9550SE.

http://ipsgproducts.com/products/video_cards/radeon9550se128mb_600726.html
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9550/

Yes, Its working although taking lot of resources of the computer. I think I may end up upgrading memory too. The TV quality is not that great. But I think few reasons are,

  • Image size: My desktop setting is 1024 x 780. And NTSC signal provides only 648 x 486 resolution. Either I need to decrease the resolution of monitor or watch in small wondow. I prefer small, and that the reason I installed this (to do multitasking). So its not an issue of clarity but the size.
  • Distance: We are used to work from small distance on desktop, may be 18-24 inch). But I think to watch low quality video, we need atleast 3 feet of distance. This is main reason for less than expected quality (again my reason).
  • And I think most important: Monitor quality: I have years old monitor. That really sucks.
  • Settings: Agian not related to quality, but to me, it looks like, either all the channels are over exposed or under exposed. This may be due to the default settings of channels feed. My monitor settings are according to the applications and OS I am running.
  • Whats about light in the room: Usually we watch motion picture in dark roombut the computer area is light-ed. Not sure this setting is also playing any role.
But I am happy with my new toy. I will put details later...

Ciao & Arrivederci...