[mythtv-users] which is better, using S-Video or VGA?

[Robert Denier]

On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 16:42 +0100, Andrew Wilson wrote:
> This is what I was going to do (replace my TV with my good quality LCD
> computer monitor).... until I tried it out. The picture quality is
> simply FAR better on a TV than on a monitor.

While a monitor may expose flaws in the tv signal to a greater extent, I
simply don't buy that TV's give better pictures.

Take a good wallpaper that is as big as a current lcd monitor's native
resolution and compare that to a tv side by side.  If you think the tv
gives the better picture, well, then I'm surprised.

I suspect part of the issue deals with removing interlacing artifacts
and the interpolation a video card will do to stretch out an image.  If
you can look for a video card that does something better than simple
linear interpolation.  Most newer ati/nvidia once probably do something
decent, but I haven't looked lately.  As to the dinterlacing, well myth
has a couple options.

Finally unless your using a 350's s-video output, I doubt the signal is
being reconstructed correctly to go to a tv and preserve the interlaced
structure.  Maybe nvidia's cards do it, but I doubt it.  Without this
preservation your again likely better off with a monitor.

> 
> And also TV looks FAR better on an old fashioned CRT than an LCD or
> even a plasma TV. Sure, they are more convenient what with the slim
> size, and lower power consumption but they are just not as good for
> watching TV.
> 
> Go to a TV shop and see for yourself.

At any rate I personally think my vizio l32 lcd looks better than my old
32 inch crt, but thats still my opinion I suppose.  I'm taking this lcd
back when the winbook 32 arrives so I can get a 1:1 dot for dot display
rather than the vizio's rescaling of the vga signal.

I may make a better post tomorrow once I get it to play with, but if
anyone wants a winbook 32 inch lcd you may want search for it via
pricewatch.com.  You should see it offered for $999 + 100 shipping
instead of $1099 + ~$135 shipping at their web site.

Also, if you want to use the monitor for anything other than tv, well
then a monitor is better as well.  For instance, I can read quite easily
off this LCD monitor.  Perhaps doing so sometimes will have some small
benefit to my vision since it is farther away, although I'm obviously
not an eye doctor...


-Robert