ATI AIW Radeon Owners Using the HDTV Adapter - Experiences????

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:30:08 GMT
Hammer Toe wrote:

Is anybody out there 'DRIVING' a large screen HDTV using ATI's HDTV
adapter that comes standard with some AIW's and is optional with
others?

(I have an AIW 9600 which does NOT 'come standard' with the adapter
and I am wondering if it is worth getting one?)

If are are, what are your experiences using the adapter?

What does it 'do for you' in terms of picture quality?

Is if better than what you can get using Composite or SVIDEO IN?

Also, what 'resolution' can you drive the HDTV at using this adapter?
Can it be 'higher' than that available with Composite/SVIDEO?

Finally, I seem to recall complaints of uncorrectbale 'overscan'
results on HDTVs using this adapter, so bad that some reported they
had to give up using the Adapter in discust. Can anyone comment on
this? is the problem there/still there?

I found the results with DVI to be far superior to component video. But
the component video adapter (if you actually find the part number for
one for the 9600 AIW by the way please share) does give you HDTV, which
is to say it can go up to 1920x1080, if the set supports that, which is
vastly better than anything you can get with NTSC or composite. I try it
every time new drivers come out and so far I've had the overscan problem
on all of them--3.10 is supposed to fix it but the machine I use for
that died the death the other day and I'm waiting for parts so haven't
been able to try the 3.10s.

TIA


--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Hammer Toe wrote in
:

Is anybody out there 'DRIVING' a large screen HDTV using ATI's HDTV
adapter that comes standard with some AIW's and is optional with
others?

What does it 'do for you' in terms of picture quality?
Is if better than what you can get using Composite or SVIDEO IN?

Much, much better picture quality than SVideo, and presumably even moreso
compared to composite. Nice and crisp, the way it should be.

Also, what 'resolution' can you drive the HDTV at using this adapter?
Can it be 'higher' than that available with Composite/SVIDEO?

You're more limited by your TV than the video card. With SVideo you can
run up to 1024x768, if memory serves correct. With component output you
have the various component resolutions to choose from - 480i, 480p, 720p,
1080i, maybe one more. My TV will only do 480p, so I'm limited to 640x480p
(actually 640x432p due to overscan...). If I use SVideo I can do 1024x768.
The TV is surely downconverting that to a lower resolution, but I find that
a non-DVD movie (a VCD or something) looks much better with SVideo at
1024x768 and downconverted than at 480p with any image improving software I
can find.

Finally, I seem to recall complaints of uncorrectbale 'overscan'
results on HDTVs using this adapter, so bad that some reported they
had to give up using the Adapter in discust. Can anyone comment on
this? is the problem there/still there?

This is the fatal flaw with ATI's component output. Some people seem to
get lucky and get a good picture, or so they say. The other 99% of us have
significant overscan. Typically in 480p you will lose at the top and
bottom about as much as the height of the taskbar, and on the left and
right you'll lose most of the Start button. ATI's "fix" for the overscan
problem is "optimized" resolutions - since they can't generate a legal
640x480p signal, they give you 640x432p resolution (squishing the
horizontal and chopping the vertical). That's OK for your desktop and
movies and such, but if you try to play a game it will revert to a proper
640x480 resolution, and you'll have both vertical and horizontal overscan.

The 3.10 Catalyst drivers claim to have a fix for the overscan, but they
offer nothing more than the previous drivers. In fact, I'm finding the
3.10 drivers worse, as now any full screen application sets my desktop back
to 8 bit color, and setting it back to 32 bit usually causes a loss of sync
and a haywire picture (when this happens I can only get my component
picture back by rebooting with a monitor and the TV connected). Didn't
have that problem with the pre-3.10 COD fix drivers. Due to all these
issues, I'm planning to sacrifice the clarity of the component output and
go back to SVideo like I was using when I had a Radeon 9000 instead of the
AIW 9800 I have now. Rather disappointing, as the component output was a
big reason for my purchase of the AIW 9800, and I would have considered a
new TV purchase if it worked well.