Why is Nvidia wasting TV-out quality

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It is obviously for me, that Nvidia doesn't care to much about TV-out.
Not in the drivers (e.g. allways overscan...., => black frame) and no care for the used TV-chip (Philips, Conexant or Chromtel).
I Know that lots of you have big enough screens, like me, and maybe never use any TV-out feature, ok ,but it can be very usefull evan for 3d-gaming!
And what a pitty to see fine 3d-quality going down or 'blackframed' by poor boardlayouts or simply shortcomming drivers.... on TV-out.
Is Nvidia simply not aware of it or more likely ignorant?
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BTW,how important decent TV-out could be, is Marc Rein explaining here:
http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=175091
 
I play on my 33' NTSC TV with my 8500, I especially like Nascar 4...for First Person Shooters I prefer my 21' monitor as I can pick people off much easier @ 1600 x1200. I have to agree that gaming on the big screen is pretty cool.
I have no idea what the quality is like on a Geforce 4..only read about it.. but I'm sure companies cut corners a bit to help with cost.
 
I have TVtool and yes it does help, except I cannot use 800x600 resolution out because it becomes a blurry mess. My Radeon64 TV output puts to shame my GF3 Ti200 TV output anyday of the week.
 
It is obviously for me, that Nvidia doesn't care to much about TV-out.
Click to expand...

That's probably true, considering NVIDIA doesn't make a single product with TV-out. That's the job of the 3rd party manufacturer who actually makes the card. I suggest you use the drivers provided by the company that made the card if you want to use the add-on features they've included ;)
 
The TV Out quality on the Gainward GeForce3 Ti200 doesn't seem too bad.


Then again, it's the only card I've used that has had TV out, so I don't have a comparison.
 
up said:
It is obviously for me, that Nvidia doesn't care to much about TV-out. Not in the drivers (e.g. allways overscan...., => black frame) and no care for the used TV-chip (Philips, Conexant or Chromtel).
I Know that lots of you have big enough screens, like me, and maybe never use any TV-out feature, ok ,but it can be very usefull evan for 3d-gaming! And what a pitty to see fine 3d-quality going down or 'blackframed' by poor boardlayouts or simply shortcomming drivers.... on TV-out. Is Nvidia simply not aware of it or more likely ignorant?
up
Click to expand...

Bad TV-out functionality is an old problem. I guess Nvidia is not aware that this is a real problem for the consumer. One of the key problem is that most reviewers never test this feature. They show a cool picture of the card, mention that it has TV-out and that's it. Its kinda ridiculous that you have to spend another 10 Euro (TV-Tool...) for a 400 Euro card to make its TV out usefull, while some low cost 50 Euro cards from other vendors deliver troublefree TV out functionality right out of the box. The latest GeForce4 card do not even work with the TV Tool utility, so you can't get rid of this sappy black borders around the screen at all.

And no, in case of Nvidia cards, it is not the job of the card manufactures to fix this, as the card manufacturers normaly don't have access to the driver sources. It may be their job to insist on Nvidia fixing the issue, but they can't do it themself.
 
Hmm. I get thin black bars at the top and bottom of my TV screen with my 8500 and when I expand the screen vertically in the drivers the screen starts to disappear behind the bars. Is this my TV causeing the problem?
 
ram said:
And no, in case of Nvidia cards, it is not the job of the card manufactures to fix this, as the card manufacturers normaly don't have access to the driver sources. It may be their job to insist on Nvidia fixing the issue, but they can't do it themself.
Click to expand...
I don't think so, Nvidia might be laying the basics for TV-Out down in their drivers and that is what most manufacturers decide to use. You really think Nvidia's manufacturing partners can't modify the drivers? That's because most are too lazy to, or they see no need for it! For example ASUS has often modified drivers for their Nvidia cards, they used to have several additional features like the infamous wireframe and see-through modes and menus to adjust brightnes/contrast/etc. on-screen during a game to name just a few. Not sure about what their drivers are like now, as I haven't been using an ASUS board for almost a year, but I assume they are still more than just the reference detonators many other vendors use for their cards. Asus programmers certainly modified those drivers themselves, so they seem to have had access to the drivers source, maybe not every Nvidia card manufacturer has that kinda access, but the closer ones should.

Nvidia sells the graphics chips and provides drivers for those, but it's the manufacturer's decision which TV-Chips they use, if any at all, and if they want to provide better TV-Out functionality than the Nvidia drivers have built in already, then its their job to improve on the default drivers...

For advanced TV experience Nvidia has that Personal Cinema thingy to offer, there it is definitely their responsibility to make everything work right on the driver level.
 
Gollum said:
You really think Nvidia's manufacturing partners can't modify the drivers? That's because most are too lazy to, or they see no need for it! For example ASUS has often modified drivers for their Nvidia cards, they used to have several additional features like the infamous wireframe and see-through modes and menus to adjust brightnes/contrast/etc. on-screen during a game to name just a few.
Click to expand...

Yes, I do believe that the card manufactures don't get driver sources and only can adjust the GUI part of the detonator drivers.

What ASUS did with their cheat drivers can be done with a simple wrapper passing adjusted D3D/OGL calls to the driver. There is even a third party wrapper available which can do this.
 
I'm not sure whether Nvidia can affect (thru drivers or whatever) which TV chip the vendor puts on the card, nor do I know how much a particular card's driver are Nvidia and how much they're OEM (driver leaks suggest Nvidia offers a lot of variety).

I'm sure the TV-out should work and satisfy the customer out-of-the-box without shareware to screw other things up. Idealism?
 
c't: The TV-out of graphic cards with Nvidia chips never was really usefull, as the shown picture is too small. Videos and games on TV are sourrounded by a black border. Why is there no overscan button in Nvidia's drivers?

David Kirk: I'm not aware of that problem. The hardware is probably able to show a bigger screen, the software just has to enable the overscan button. I will initiate that an overscan button is included in the next release or the release after next.
Click to expand...
 
I wouldn't go as far and say the TV-Out wasn't usefull because of the black border, but it certainly is annoying and something that should be easily fixed - I don't care wether a manufacturer or Nvidia themselves do that. Image quality on the TV-Outs I have used at home was usually very good. After some more thinking I actually tend to agree with you now that driver sources are probably not accessible by manufacturers, I still think the drivers are probably built in such a way though, that manufactuers should be able to fix issues like this themselves.
BTW, from when is that quote from David Kirk, looks like there's hope to a better TV-Out in the next official Detonators?
 
That's probably true, considering NVIDIA doesn't make a single product with TV-out.
Click to expand...

Since the reference GF3 and GF4 all have TV-Out functionality, then it would be equally logical to state that NVIDIA doesn't make a single videocard product, period.. and therefore is also totally not responsible for driver quality even with 3D games or Windows drivers.

Just like RAM, RF Filter choice, Heat-sink fan, etc.etc- the tv chip can be a corner cut by the manufacturer, but in the cases of poor TV-Out quality, all the boards I've found have equal or better chipsets for this, just poor driver design and/or poor hardware engineering.

To insist upon manufacturers drivers is utter tomfoolery for two reasons:
1) NONE of the "manufacturers" drivers currently address the problem that I've tested. This includes Gainward, VisionTek and Leadtek. Unsure of MSI or Asus.
2) This would make the GF4 cards an unrealistic purchasing decision as the bug fixes that already take at least 1-2 months to achieve would instantly become 4-7 months waytime. You'd be looking at likely Aug->Sept. for many manufacturers drivers based on the current 29.42s.



I found this one, maybe others are happy with it too!
Click to expand...

For something that costs another $199.00 to add functionality that is "free" on all other products, I somehow couldn't find myself smiling happily in this scenario. :)

The real solution is for NVIDIA to simply support proper TV-Out for the singular chipset as recommended by their reference board design. Manufacturers that deviate from this preferred TV-Out chip would be the ones to blame for improper function with reference drivers and therefore take the burden off NVIDIA for these cases.

It comes down to there being no "reference" proper TV-Out functionality so therefore manufacturers drivers will simply have the same improper functionality when making drivers based on these reference drivers.
 
http://tvtool.info/index_e.htm

There is a new version of TV Tool available, with basic support (no twinview, DVI) for Geforce4 cards. Only cards with an EXTERNAL TV out chip will be supported. The chance of getting a TV Tool which supports the internal TV out is near zero, as the authors don't get specs or any other help for this part.
 
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