Audio and Video Card suggestions

[bostonnewbie]

I had an old system that I figured could be fun to run LinuxMCE on.  After jumping through a few hoops, I got the software installed and it seems to be working well.  When I started, I wanted to make sure that everything would work before I invested any money into the system.  Now that things are working I would like to fix a few things, mostly the video and audio. 

The video card that was in the system is pretty old and to hook it to my TV, I just bought an adapter that converts the VGA signal to Svideo.  This does work but the screen is a bit blurry, and not the best quality.  I selected the VGA input (I think 1280 x 800 pix).  I am assuming that the issue is the crappy video card so I need to upgrade.  Can someone provide some suggestions of good, compatible video cards that they like?  I am currently just using the system as a media library and not currently recording video, if that helps.  I would like to spend about $50 - $80 for the card so it doesn't need to be "top of the line".

For audio, I just connected the computers headphone jack to the Red/White inputs on my tv.  I do get sound but it is very faint.  I would guess that this is also an issue with the sound card and could use suggestions here as well.  Can I get a card that is audio and video?

Thanks for your help and suggestions....

[teedge77]

i doubt the problem is the video card. its more likely because you are using s-video...which would suggest you are using an old standard definition tv. is that right? you wont get a crips, clear picture on a tv using the old standard definition. you may still want to upgrade the card...but...thats not going to fix your blur problem.

[bostonnewbie]

The TV is a Sharp Aquios LCD (HD compatible) so that shouldn't be an issue.  Right now, the only output I have from the video device is SVideo.  If I get a video card that could be fixed if that is the problem or if it is the card itself.  Any other thougths?

[bostonnewbie]

Added question:

I have been looking at the suggestions in the Wiki and the one thing it states is that nVidia cards are the best supported.  But does that mean that the entire card is made by nVidia or just the chipset?  There seem to be a lot of companies that use the chipset in their own brand of card.

The other cards I'm considering are the Haupage branded ones for when I may want to use the DVR functionality.  But for those cards it looks like the HVR line (HD compatible) are not yet supported.

I'm not that much of a techie when you get to this level so help is appreciated.

[leonja]

Bostonnewbie
I am very new at this Linuxmce thing myself, but it would seem to me that if you have an LCD TV, you can bypass the s-video converter and output to the TV screen using the vga port on the TV directly.  I think this would give you the best possible image quality.  You would need your PC graphics card to be able to output a suitable resolution to show on your LCD TV.

Good luck!

leonja

[fearingsept]

I have been looking at the suggestions in the Wiki and the one thing it states is that nVidia cards are the best supported.  But does that mean that the entire card is made by nVidia or just the chipset?

The card does not have to be an nVidia brand card, it just has to have an nVidia chip set. A good budget card would be a card using the nVidia 7x series chip set. If you are in the US I would suggest using Newegg.com. They have good prices and a decent selection of low end nVidia cards. I got mine for $35.00 including shipping and it works like a dream.

-Dustin