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dell media center

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by laoguy69, Apr 24, 2005.

  1. laoguy69

    laoguy69 Member

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    Hi everybody! I got a dell all-in-one media center ver.2005 with a T.V tuner. I been trying to set up my ps2 to the computer so i could play ps2 on my computer but,i can't,do i need some other program, if i do what program?or could i do it with media center program. i hook it up right but i can't set the program to pick up the ps2 signal.
     
  2. Liez4Love

    Liez4Love Regular member

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    I dont quite understand, do you mean you use your mointer as a screen> or does you ps2 actually plug into the comp it self?
     
  3. laoguy69

    laoguy69 Member

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    i want to use the mointer as a screen,so i dont need to buy a T.V., I know how to hook it up but don't know what program to use. I try to use the program the came with my dell t.v. tuner, name-dell media center ver.2005, but that program that will not work.
     
  4. dhartson

    dhartson Guest

    I bought a Dell Media Center 2005 ("MC 2005") computer and am unhappy with the video display for TV viewing: both, on the flat panel display and on a TV. I'm sorry I'm no help on the PS2, but from the title to this thread I thought I'd post my inquiry/experience here.

    I read a review of MC 2005 at:
    http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_mce2005.asp
    It says: "Everything on the TV now looks equally beautiful when broadcast through my Media Center PC as it does without it."

    Definitely NOT TRUE with my Dell Dimension 8400 system.

    I attribute my dissatisfaction to the components Dell used in this MC computer.

    I bought a 20 in. 1600x1200 high-res flat panel from Dell with the system, and the picture is muddy (low res) compared to a regular TV picture. My system has a nVidia GeForce 6800 256 MB DDR SDRAM PCI Express (latest technology, surpasing 8X AGP) video card with VGA, DVI and s-video outputs. The system has a dual TV tuner, and I have sent the signal to the family TV via the s-video connector. The picture is very poor on the monitor at the full 1600x1200 resolution using the DVI-D connector; the native resolution of the system TV tuners is evidently 1024x768, which appears to be MS's spec for MC2005 in non-Hi Def mode. The picture on the monitor in a window (not full screen, but a window enlarged to its maximum size) is better, but the picture is still quite muddy (not crisp or sharp) compared to the regular TV picture. The picture displayed on the TV through s-video has the same problem, plus another (keystoning) problem discussed below.

    If it were not for the review mentioned above, I would have guessed that the loss of a crisp TV picture is the result of the TIVO type compression, but I'm also guessing that it is substantially inferior to TIVO; if I bought a TIVO and the picture was this poor, I'd take it back. The picture is not unwatchable, but is decidedly inferior, "degraded" I should say. The review that said this was a problem with earlier versions of MC, but was corrected in MC 2005 with the increase in encoding from 6 Mbps to 9 Mbps. FYI: I have MC set for the highest picture quality, so this is not the source of the problem. Bottom line, it must be the components Dell used, presumably either the tuner card, the video card, or both.

    On the keystoning problem when sending the display to the TV via s-video, the TV display suffers a serious keystone and distortion at the top corners of the picture. A new driver from nVidia changed the situation with allowing a lot more control but distorts the picture by widening the display so that faces look "fatter" than in the regular TV picture. The "stretched" picture allows you to crop out the keystone distorted sides of the picture, but this is not exactly a quality work around.

    All in all, in my opinion, if you are buying a computer for the TV experience, look elsewhere for now. If you have a Dell and have a different experience, please post your comments!
     

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