Would a HDMI connection be better? (1 Viewer)

[FLY]

eventhough the tv manual doesn't say anything about hdmi->dvi connection, you can force it to connect thru nvidia control panel or powerstrip.

BUT others are right, there isn't much difference between HDMI and VGA. I have found that out by spending $50 on hdmi->dvi cable and several hours to get it to work.

 

[Geon106]

DVI and HDMI are as good as each other. Personally, get yourself a mid to high end 7 or 8 series graphics card and if your TV has DVI in, then use DVI. If not you can get DVI to HDMI converters[however they can be a bit costly] This will give a sharper image than VGA and you won't be limited to finding a GPU with HDMI onboard.

I do recommend a 7600GT or higher for the best performance/value ratio.

 

[mrkrad]

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10231&cs_id=1023104&p_id=2661&seq=1&format=2
$4.28 for a dvi to hdmi cable. works great. doesn't look any better than the dvi input (dvi-d) on the same tv, matter of fact for video purposes it doesn't look much different from the svga port. i usually buy a ton of monoprice cables, they are great for short haul runs, you have to be careful and scope the cables for long runs, hdmi in particular is pretty sensitive to quality versus SVGA HD-15.

since my media is not encrypted, i got the 8600GT OC it was on sale for $84 and uses 46 watts (which uses the 75 watt pci-e slot alone for power). Then i realized it lacked hdcp (no biggie as non encrypted media, anydvd hd ) so newegg gave me $20 refund for misleading me. Last 1080p i played peaked about 50% on the GPU and even though it has the cheaper 128 bit bus it runs pretty fast without making alot of noise.

Quite honestly for now, 1080p and all , cyberlind,coreavc and newest ffdshow can handle soft-decoding all formats without dropping frames without purevideoHD (VP2). It's cheaper to invest in CPU thanks to massive E2140/E4300 overclocking abilities than buy alot of GPU. E2140's can hit 3.2ghz all day long and that will soft decode anything you throw at it and have enough power to handle audio based (toslink for me thank you) on what i've played around with. I used a pos 7300 GS OC 256meg with that scenario it was stupid cheap and it played fine.

i don't play games on my htpc. I just bought a box that would work in both xbmc linux and media portal till i see which prevails

 

[pStar]

hiho

maybe i did something wrong or:

hdmi (via dvi->hdmi cable) is not capable of doing the mysterious 1360X768 resolution, which most "cheaper" lcd need to do a 1:1 pixelmapping (ok ok, you loose 3 pixels columns on the sides). it seems that hdmi only supports 720p (less resolution on a native1366X768 lcd-panel) and 1080i/p (needs to be downscaled on a native1366X768 lcd-panel).
so i stepped back to vga to get the most resolutuion out of my 32" samsung (german model number: samsung LE 32 S 81). and i'm totally happy with it.

regards

 

[synthdood]

If the VGA input on your TV does 1:1 pixelmapping and you have a halfway decent graphics card it will be as good as DVI (or HDMI, which is just DVI over a different plug). Personally I think the whole DVI/HDMI thing is way overrated. Most problems are due to the fact that TV's rarely support proper 1:1 pixelmapping (either on DVI or VGA) and try to do their own stretching/scaling which you really don't want when you're using MediaPortal. In an ideal situation the TV should not do any scaling and the PC should drive the TV at its native panel resolution.

 

[pStar]

i think so too. even component video from my xbox360 looks very good. far more important for good picture quality are blacklevels, contrast and colorcapabilities of the display.
on the other side, i have to press the autoadjust button on my tv-remote to "auto-lock" the analog pixels to the physical ones of the display once in a while...but this is the only drawback of the analog vga connection i can see at the moment...
regards

 

[Gamester17]

http://www.geardigest.com/2007/09/11/hdmi_vs_component/
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/s...igh-Def_FAQ:_Is_HDMI_1.3_Really_Necessary/853
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=14750

 

[magiardi]

I also have a Samsung LCD, and in the end decided for HDMI (actually DVI-to-HDMI) but I use VGA concection for all other PC uses (I have NVidia 6150 which can output two separate resolutions out of VGA and DVI)

1) The VGA out for PC use is 1360x768 with perfect 1:1 pixel mapping, the resolution is beautifully sharp, e.g. for web browsing
2) The DVI out into the HDMI of the TV gives me better colours (because the colours are simply treated by the TV and it is Samsung expertise to create a nice picture, much better than any manual tweaking of the viedo card that I have tried)
3) But most important of all, HDMI has removed my video stuttering, I set the NVidia 6150 to output 720p at 50 Hz (I live in a PAL country), there is a little overscan but the movements are finally smooth, e.g. with scrolling titles in the news the difference is huge

 

[Gateway]

DVI->HDMI & VGA connection on the same Samsung 32"..... First much better