Ok, this will be a good brain-teaser for
you videophiles.

I was just about to purchase a 950 when I
discovered a potential problem.

I'm building a system around a home
theater PC with a nice, big, quality VGA CRT.
I don't have the budget or room for anything
else right now (I got the monitor for free).
It really is a nice display.

It's of the "sync-on-green" variety so it's
my understanding that a simple
Component-to-SVGA cable will get the signal
from the 950 to the monitor OK and everything
will sync up nicely (can someone confirm
that?).

First question: what kind of resolution can
I pump through the 950? I've got the machine
running at 1600x1200 right now.

I have two potential show-stopper questions.
Will a similar Component-SVGA cable work for
the computer-to-950 connection? Also, the
950 manual says the on-screen menus only go
out S-Video and Composite. I've never heard
of anything like an S-Video AND Component to
SVGA converter/combiner. Do such things
exist? I'd really rather not give up
component video. Does it matter for a
computer monitor? If not, then an S-Video
solution would be easier.

Any thoughts?

-Dave

[Ok, for some reason the message board
wouldn't let me submit my edits to the
original post.]

Here are a couple more wrinkles:

The computer has a Hauppage WinTV-Theater
capture board that has an S-Video input. I
have no idea how that might work in this
setup. The machine runs MythTV under Linux
to do PVR duties and I'm not sure there's a
Linux driver for the S-Video input. A web
search didn't turn up anything immediately
obvious.

The computer also has a rebranded ATI Radeon
9200 for the video output. The card (made
by Gigabyte) has VIVO (Video In Video Out)
capability. Linux drivers for this exist
via the GATOS project but I'm not sure it
plays nice with MythTV. And again I don't
know how the setup will react to two video
sources (main computer/TV out on SVGA/950
and an S-Video input from the 950). Seems
like some sort of feedback loop could be
created.

The 950's component video switching is rated for high definition video (which would potentially mean 1920x1080), so 1600x1200 ought to switch cleanly.

Here's a thought, though: why route the video through the 950 at all? All setup menus in the 950 can be readily accessed using the 950's front panel display, so you don't have to get the OSD piped over to the display. You would only really want/need the video switching if you have more than one source, and your post seems to indicate that you've only got the PC as a source currently.

------------------
gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Does the front panel show everything the
on-screen menus do? If so then that's
perfectly acceptable to me. I guess I'm
used to lower-end stuff that doesn't make
all of the settings available through the
panel interface.

Yes, you can access every menu and control on the 950 without having a display hooked up to the monitor output -- everything is displayed on the 950's front panel.

------------------
gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

I would highly recommend NOT running the PC's video through the 950.

If the ATI driver setup under Linux allows you to select the svideo input on the card, you might be able to connect the 950 to the video card and just choose that input when you want to view the 950's OSD. If you direct connect the HTPC as I suggest below, you'll get no feedback loop. (This can be done with the ATI cards under Windows. I haven't used one under Linux.)

Although the video bandwidth on the 950 is just fine, ANY additional and/or unnecessary switching in a high-rez video chain is going to compromise the picture quality to a greater or lesser degree. This is increased if you're transcoding from RGB/SVGA to component and back.

If your CRT will accept an svideo or composite video input, you might want to run a separate cable from the 950 to the CRT just for the convenience of the OSD setup. Switching between sources at the CRT is going to be MUCH easier than doing it under software control on the HTPC. (However, as Gonk points out, you can do all the 950 setup from its front panel display.)

The best arrangement IMHO is to just run your RGB cable from the HTPC to your CRT, and a digital audio cable from the HTPC to your 950.

[This message has been edited by boblinds (edited March 01, 2004).]