PC to TV

[Malecheon]

Hello hardware-type people who know more about this stuff than me,

I've recently acquired a small form factor PC that I was going to connect to the TV in our living room for displaying pictures and family vids and stuff.

It's running Vista Home Premium so it has media centre, which is good, but it's only got integrated graphics with a vga out, which is bad.

My TV is a couple of years old and is a CRT with no HD connectors. The PC does have a spare PCI-E slot, so I presume all I need is a low profile (cos of the small form factor case) graphics card with some kind of TV-out on it ?

I think for now I need something with s-video out so that I can just use an s-video to scart cable, but I want to try and future proof a bit in case we upgrade to a HD tv.

Is a card with s-video out and DVI sufficient for this ? If so, can anyone help find a reasonably priced one ?

I don't think it needs to be anything fancy, as it's never going to be used for gaming or photo/video editting, just for outputing to a TV.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Yaka]

for futrue proofing you can get low profile cards with hdmi, dvi an a svhs ports on.

you say your crt tv is a couple of years old, does it have component connections by any chance then? if so you can get vga to component cables, for picture and use 3.5 to phono cable for sound.



you may want to use media portalfor a front end, but its quite bloaty.

also the beta version xbmc for windows is preety solid as well, but tis in beta

 

[Kryten]

Solid advice there

I remember seeing an ATI x1650 Pro card - low profile, HDMI, VGA and S-Video output; that'll serve all the purposes you'll need. It won't be playing yer games but it's going to run a TV nicely, as Yaka rightly says keeps you nice and futureproof should you get a new telly in future and is well set up for TV output either with ATI's standard software or Omega 3rd party kit.

I tend to stick with recommending ATI for media centres, just as they're less limited and well priced

 

[Malecheon]

Thanks chaps.

The TV's only got scart I'm afraid, but the sound will be going through a home cinema system anyway, so it's only the video signal that'll be through the scart.

I was looking at a 8400GS low profile, with svideo and dvi for about £25 but will have a shop around for ATI cards as well.

 

[Yaka]

for htpc use id go for the ati all in wonder range