Ugh, PC to TV looks like CRAP (1 Viewer)

[Shane Morales]

Hooked up my PC to my TV (s-video, normal 27" TV). Set resolution to 640x480, monitor set as TV, used TV Tool, etc.

I can barely read any text on the TV (icnos, filenames, anything). And it going at 60Hz like that just kills my eyes. Is that normal? Jeezus, it looks horrible. Pretty much unusable.

Did I do something wrong or is that how it's supposed to be?

 

[Patrick Sun]

TVs don't have the high resolution that typical PC monitors have, and definitely won't look as crisp as a PC monitor.

 

[KyleS]

How its supposed to be. Thats why your monitor is so much more expensive in the size ratio vs your TV.

KyleS

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Yep, not to mention it's an interlaced display, so trying to read text will be downright impossible. I'm not sure who told you it would be usable, but it's not.

This is why a 27 inch monitor costs several thousand dollars, lol.

-vince

 

[Shane Morales]

No one told me it would be usable, but if they did I'd kick 'em square in the nuts for lying to me. This sucks. I knew it would look bad, but I had no idea it would be this crappy.

Alas and woe for me, I moved a spare PC down by the old TV so I could setup a PC audio station. Got all my tunes on it, everything ready to go, and now I can't see what the hell I'm doing to select songs and stuff.

What i need is some command line flac player... full screen DOS mode. Something like that.

Oh well, guess I need to buy a 15" lcd for this.

Thanks guys.

 

[Tekara]

here's some tips:
select a high visibility windows theme, these use larger font sizes that will make it easier to read on a TV.
set the dpi under your display properties->advanced to a higher value.

you can also get powerstrip and try reducing the resolution to 320x240. . . it will be really tight in the desktop real-estate arena, but everything should be easy to use at this resolution.

PC->TV looks pretty good for movies and visualizations, but. . . uhm, yeah - for text, the resolution of the TV just isn't good enough to pass.

 

[Shane Morales]

powerstrip, eh? I think I'll give that a go. Thanks. Yeah, I did all those things you suggested, but it still sucked.

I found a prog to control winamp via dos prompt which does sort of what I need. Plan B, I guess.

 

[Scott L]

argh.. post got deleted in transmission.

What card ya have? I use TVTool too with a 4200 and the S-vid quality is great. i can read the text just fine, especially at 640x480 since everything's so big. What TV is it too? My wega can accept 800x600, I've been wondering if others can do it too.

 

[Shane Morales]

An update.

I used powerstrip to get 640x400 and that helped out a lot. I made the fonts even bigger, screwed around with custom colors, etc, and got everything setup so I could navigate and do stuff at that resolution. I'm using Winamp 5 and the 'modern' skin works nicely - no need to go messing around with the command line utility.

The video card is an Abit Siluro nVidia FX5200. The TV is a Panasonic 27" (normal). It can do 800x600, but it's completley useless at that resolution.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[MorganT]

What I do is just network my 2 PCs together and run Remote Connection to get everything setup initially.


Once you have TVtool installed, you should have no problem seeing stuff fine.