ATI 9600 to TV video output disappointing

I recently bought an ATI 9600 all in wonder video card to use it for digital video recording to TV- kind of a PC based TIVO. I got the idea from reading excellent reviews about the card and its software applications.

Now that I have set it up, however, I am somewhat dissappointed at the quality of the video image it creates. I am running the signal via an S video out cable from the card to my TV, which is a nice but not high definition, 36 inch CRT model.
The images are grainy and quite noticeably lower quality than when I simply watch TV via the analog cable input that I have.

The TV does not have component or DVI input. The s video cable is only about 6 feet long.

I have tried adjusting software parameters without much luck. Does anyone have a similar experience, or suggestions?

Thanks

David

I have encountered the same problem. I have a radeon 9800 and hooked it up to my tv as well. I notice the same grainyness to the picture while watching DVDs. At first I thought it was my less that high quality tv but then I did a test with viewing a web page with the tv out enabled. There was a large area of the page that was a orangy-yellow color, and shure enough, it displayed this color not as one solid color as on my monitor, but as sort of a checker board pattern of orange and yellow dots. I don't know why the color depth is insufficient to display this color as a solid color, but I think it must have something to do with the chip they use to generate the TV signal with.
I also found in the advanced settings, under displays, when selecting the tv properties, there is a setting for 'dot crawl' which can be set to 'standard' or fixed'. Setting this to fixed made the orange and yellow pattern static, and the standard setting made them move around. Fixed seems better for viewing still images but the grainyness is much less noticable for video if set to standard. Give that a try for best results.
Try contacting ATI and see if it's something they fix with a firmware or driver upgrade. In the mean time, if high quality editing is what you are looking for, consumer cards won't quite cut it quality wise, however, DVD burners are becoming quite reasonable price wise, and would maintain good quality.

Thanks for your postings on the ATI card. On a related topic, I enabled my TV output in addition to my PC display, but when I use the ATI TV app and/or try to play video on RealOne or any other player, the video/TV will display on my PC, but comes through as blank on the TV display. I can't find any setting that would be allowing/preventing this. Also, my TV does not show the full size of the PC screen - I suspect I need to lower resolution for that, but don't know how to specify the resolution for the TV display. In the Display Properties/Advanced it sets automatically. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

tv's have a poor quality picture because they are very low resolution, a computer monitor is high resolution and so would give a much better picture. using tv-out wont give a great picture because the graphics card has to change what is primarily a picture designed for a computer monitor to a signal that can be recognised by a tv. as with any comversion/compression quality is lost, it's just the price you pay for extra functions unfortunately.

i have a feeling this is a bug in the RealOne software, have you tried Windows MediaPlayer? WMP will play fine on my secondary monitor although like you i get a black square when i use RealOne.

I have a feeling that RealOne software is itself a bug.

It is adware/spyware.

Dear Dbr1:

I Found an article on the net, check out the following link.

URL

Also check out the next page on y/c separation and comb filters.

It explains how a similar checker pattern is generated in a normal composite video signal because the color and brightness signal interfere with each other, and can't be completely separated. They use some very complex comb filters to try and eliminate this problem. S-video is supposed to keep these signals separate so there is no problem.

I think the grainyness is caused by the lack of color separation. For some reason the color and brigtness signal are mixing. I'm not shure if it's how that signal is created, or there is some cross talk in the circuitry, or having the composite signal routed through the same connector is causing the problem. However, I think that since there does appear to be the interference problem, and using the s-video input on your tv bypasses the tv's comb filters, try using a composite cable in stead. The sharpness will drop a bit, but if my theory is correct, It should get rid of the dots.

Hope this helps.

Just in case any one still interested, it is possible to watch movies on TV at the same time as the monitor with 9600 card.
Go to your display setting then click on the 'overlay' tab then 'clone mode options', make sure 'Same on all' is ticked in the 'over lay display mode' Now you can watch the movie/ clip on your monitor as well as TV screen, no mor black screen!!
If you have a over size desk top on your TV screen and the screen pans with the mouse movement you will need to reduce your desk top resolution to the same as your TV or less.

Enjoy!!!

I notice you posted in Jan so you are hopefully past this by now but this might help others searching on the topic. I use S-video on my ATI 8500 and had the same problem, I found out the compression happens when the card resizes your desktop to the s-video resolution of 640x480. If you set your desktop to 640x480 then it looks fine, as good as my DVD player with component input (on Toshiba 36" tube TV anyway). The downside is that a 640 desktop bites because your DVD controls are massive and most windows don't even fit on the screen. Using less colors at 800x600 seems to help a little but going to 640 is the only way to get a perfect picture with "TV out"

Kille

On tv out cards the TV should be set as the primary display for the best TV viewing and for some programs to even show up on the TV. To watch it on your monitor and TV at the same time just set both to primary, but bear in mind this will force the refresh rate of your monitor to that of your TV. This holds true for every TV card I've used and I've had several. Any radeon duel head is by far my favorite to use. Divx player will show up on both regardless, and I believe BS Player will as well. Windows Media Player and the like, prefer to be viewed on the Primary Display. You can also set up hot keys for different setups that save time. I run 2 mitsubishi's and a JVC off the same radeon 7500 duel head. I do alot of video editing and in and out of my PC, and the 2 main causes of bad picture quality are first the cable ( I use high grade coax with composite adapters on both ends, shielding is more important than the type of connection, the s-video cables included with most hardware are usually very cheap and have very poor shielding.) I have a run of about 45' thru the walls and ceiling and my picture is DVD quality. Make sure to keep video cables routed away from power and unshielded speaker wires to prevent picking up any EMI. The second cause is the setting on your PC. Monitors and TV have different resolutions and refresh rates. Trying to view web pages on anything less than a monitor, LCD, or plasma TV is kind of pointless as you won't be able to see everything at once and the resolution will probably give you a headache. Although some people do list items on eBay in high contrast with a large font for the benefit webTV users which contradicts what I just said. Have fun!