Help with RSX-1055 and PC Composite Video

[dmcgowan]

After having spent most of the past few weeks browsing the board and learning quite a bit, I have struck a problem and wondered if anyone had any ideas to assist?

I have connected up my PC to the Video 5 / Coaxial 1 inputs and whilst sound works fine, the quality of the image is absolutely abysmal. I am using a Loewe Calida 84cm TV and used to have another PC direct wired through a VGA card. There is a lot of striping across the image and it just looks awful albeit at a higher resolution (800 x 600) compared to the direct (640 x 480) VGA connection. The only time it seems to look almost bearable from any angle is when the 3D Pipes screensaver is running. I've tried a few cables but none seem to have any impact (e.g. a 1m 75 ohm "quality" video interconnect looks no better than a cheap Radio Shack 5m stereo interconnect).

Ran out of time this weekend but my next steps were to try :

(1) Direct composite output from the PC card to Loewe input port (through a SCART adapter)
(2) Comparison of the quality of the direct VGA signal (this is the first time this PC has been hooked up this way)
(3) Repeat current process with S-Video connections from PC -> RSX -> Loewe or PC -> Loewe

Part of this is probably due to how the PC downgrades its output to suit a composite connection? I'd be interested to hear if anyone knew of any other traps for young players in trying to make this work? I know that PC outputs don't normally translate that well to the TV but this is so much worse than the direct 640 x 480 VGA connection that it just surprised me.

Thanks,




Darren

[Azeke]

Dmcgowan,

Okay since I don't the specifications of your video card, I will take a shot in the dark. Try the S-video cable and change your refresh rate on the video card , start at a low resolution and work your way up.

You also may want to consider upgrading your video card.

Keep us posted.

Hope this helps,

Azeke

[Kevin D]

Have you ever had the PC hooked up through anything else composite? Probably not considering you want to try connecting it direct to the tv(meaning you don't know what it could look like).

Good scan converters that take VGA output to composite cost between $200 and $1000.. How expensive was your video card, and how much of that do you think went to the composite out circuit.

I say this because I've never seen a video output on a video card look decent at all, regardless of the video card.

Kevin D.

[dmcgowan]

Thanks Azeke,

It's a 2 year old GeForce MX400 w. 64MB of RAM so I thought it should easily be able to drive a composite output? The laptop I had connected before was a Pentium 133 with a 4MB video chip so it should be able to blow that into the weeds!!!

There aren't any options to change refresh rate (it's set at 60Hz on the monitor output) so I think it might be best to give the S-Video a shot.

Cheers for the reply,




Darren

[dmcgowan]

[dmcgowan]

No, never. It works fine to a monitor at 1280 x 1024 so I just assumed that it could drive this kind of resolution in its sleep. Didn't know that it was that difficult to convert to composite so I suspect $10 of the $300 I originally paid went to this function if anything!!!

Looks like I'm going back to the direct VGA and 640 x 480 connection...