Posted by Jonathan the Red on March 08, 2002 at 10:36:08:
In this thread and this thread, I talked about cheapo no-name knockoff ATI Radeon VE-based cards. I stated that since the TV encoder is integrated with the VE core, TV output from a knockoff card should be similar to that from a genuine ATI-build product.
Folks, I was wrong. I sincerely apologize, and if anyone bought a third-party VE card based on my comments, I feel very bad about it.
I'm still not sure why that's the case... there are no other chips on the Radeon VE besides the core, the BIOS, and the RAM... but after actually trying my no-brand card, it's clear that the TV output sucks.
Here's what I'm getting. If I fire up the computer connected only to the TV, the picture rolls constantly. Completely useless. If I fire up the computer connected to both a monitor and the TV, the TV is not detected by ATI's multimonitor driver and so I can't enable it.
Can anyone offer any advice? Other than "throw out that cheap piece of junk and buy a real video card?" Which is probably what I'm going to have to do but if my situation can be salvaged, I'd like to hear any suggestions.
And to raise once again the perennial question: if I toss the card, which card should I go with? Let's say I'd like to keep it under a hundred bucks and the only thing that's important to me is excellent quality S-Video output.