Sigma Designs Xcard support (1 Viewer)

R

RobDMB

Guest
I just want to second the notion that support for this card would be great. For people with standard definition tv's it gives great picture quality compared to the svideo out on graphics cards. It also allows you to watch tv with almost no cpu hit.
 

KevL

Portal Pro
March 3, 2005
224
1
Cambridge, UK
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Hi

Your graphics card can easily be persuaded to provide an RGB signal and composite sync for connection to the RGB scart on your TV.

This is much better quality than SVHS interconnects.

I use RGB out from my VGA card with screen Res set to 1024 x 576 at 50Hz refresh rate (ie. prog scan non interlaced). I actually feed this signal through a hardware RGB to YUV colourspace convertor as my TV only accepts YUV signals in progscan mode.

In my setup I found the difference between RGB and SVHS as at least as big as the difference between SVHS and composite.

Might be worth a go if you have a soldering iron and some 75ohm coax lying around.

Kev
 
H

htpc2good4u

Guest
Wow...this thread is old...thought there would be a whole lot more chatter about the X-Card....

But yeah...I was looking into trying to get captured video from my ATI TV Wonder VE to the X-Card about a year ago. I found out that I could do it by using a DirectShow graph connecting the TV Wonder to a MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 encoder, then pass it through to the X-Card. It's not too difficult.

But the hard part would be getting the MediaPortal window out to the x-card. But this could be done using a DirectShow filter that captures the screen, then send that to an encoder filter, and back out to the X-Card.

But that also raises issues with playing DVD's. Because the MediaPortal window would already be using the X-Card to decode it, the DVD video would have to be decoded using software, then encoded with the screen data and sent back out to the X-Card...or maybe use the overlay filter to combine the two streams...but it would still require a software decoder (which the DScaler 5 MPEG2 decoder is coming along rather well.)

Another possibility is the NetStream 2000 driver for Linux. I have heard rumors that it has support for the X-Card. Someone could port the driver over to Windows and then it could be directly integrated with MediaPortal (without having to use the drivers from Sigma.)

Oh yeah, I have used JovePlayer (which is the ancient version of TVedia)...it's a nice app...but doesn't have nearly the same level of customization as MediaPortal.

If anyone has comments on what I have said, please feel free to tell me...I might even see if I can squeeze im time to develop a plugin to work with the XCard... :lol:
 

DungeonMaster

New Member
November 10, 2005
2
0
KevL said:
Hi

Your graphics card can easily be persuaded to provide an RGB signal and composite sync for connection to the RGB scart on your TV.

This is much better quality than SVHS interconnects.

I use RGB out from my VGA card with screen Res set to 1024 x 576 at 50Hz refresh rate (ie. prog scan non interlaced). I actually feed this signal through a hardware RGB to YUV colourspace convertor as my TV only accepts YUV signals in progscan mode.

In my setup I found the difference between RGB and SVHS as at least as big as the difference between SVHS and composite.

Might be worth a go if you have a soldering iron and some 75ohm coax lying around.

Kev

Can you please give more info on that?

Thanks.
 

KevL

Portal Pro
March 3, 2005
224
1
Cambridge, UK
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Hi

Dont visit this site often but here goes.

Your graphics card can produce RGB and sync signals. You can connect the RGB and composite signals to your TV directly.

If you have a radeon card then you can set it to produce a composite sync directly (No H +V sync to Composite sync converter required).

You need to get hold of an app called Powerstrip (well worth the asking price). This will allow you to set the 720x576 (for pal) at 25Hz interlaced signal for a standard TV or 50HZ for a progscan TV. You need to set video for 625lines (576 active lines) for UK and something else (525lines (480 active for NTSC US?????)

Powerstrip can also enable the composite (H+V) sync signal on your VGA card so that the lead is a simple 4 x 75Ohm coax link .

You need to make a lead up with the VGA connector at one end and scart at the other.

If you dont have an ATI graphics card then you can make an H+V sync to composite sync convertor.

Search the web for details on "powerstrip" and "VGA to scart lead" The latter info will show you the scart pins and VGA pins to connect in each of the 4coax links). Buy decnet 75ohm coax (thin is more convenient as you will be limited by scart connector cable diameter)

With this arrangement you can get the benefit of the very high quality DACs present on even cheap VGA cards which will outperform many DACS found in high end AV equipment. AV equipment can get away with fairly low speed DACs as the PAL or NTSC signals have fairly limited bandwidths. 1600x1200 displays at 100Hz - on even cheap VGA cards -need significantly faster DACs.

Note 50Hz refresh rate (for prog scan) will look horrible (lots of flicker) on a normal pc monitor but will be fine on a TV which have a slower phosphor.

I use this technique to connect VGA to a hardware colourspace convertor which takes RGB and converts to YUV as my crappy TV only takes a progscan signal in YUV format. Works fine.


Hope this helps.


Kev
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
HI to all XCard lovers and to all who do not know what they are missing !

I just came by and saw a reply from - htpc2good4u about making support for the XCard ---

PLEASE find some time to do that, I tell you -YOU WILL BE THE MAN OF THE YEAR - Cream on the cake - Sugar in the coffee :lol: - you name it.

If you can do it, Media Portal will ring the bell.

Thanks in advance

KOMM

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :roll: [/b]
 

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