for the techies

kendiggy · Joined: 30 Nov 2004 Posts: 366 Location: not here

A while back, I purchased a new video card for my computer. Its an ATI Radeon X 1650 Pro with 512 MB DDR2 AGP 8X/4X. I don' t know much about this stuff, I can install it, etc. but as far as what makes it special, I don't understand it . All those numbers mean absolutely nothing to me (hint, a detailed explanation would be great!). But this one seemed to be what I needed when I bought it. It works fine, and has many features which I use frequently, such as an mp3/video player and the ability to connect my computer to a television, which I've used several times.

And therein lies the problem. It works, I can watch the movie, hear the sound, etc, but the picture sucks. Terribly. Its great when I watch the movie on my computer, but when I hook it up to a tv, it's no good. Its really choppy and blurry. I've fiddled around with the settings in my control panel to try to get a better picture, but it only goes so far. It does say it's windows vista ready, and I'm only running XP here. I'm wondering if that's the problem.

Could anyone help me out here? I've got lots of great movies on my computer that my sister and her husband haven't seen yet. I'd like to bring my tower over and hook it up so we can watch them, but I know they won't like the bad picture. Any advice would be great.

ANEURYSM · Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 63

I'm no expert on it either but I doubt the card would affect the clarity on your tv much so check your cords and the tv itself. If either are old or frayed it could explain your problem. Borrow someone elses cord and see if it helps. Check it on multiple tvs etc. or it might just be your video file itself. Is your tv drastically bigger then your monitor? Cause some movie files just have 1 size and it being fitted to a bigger or smaller screen can cause distortion.

kendiggy · Joined: 30 Nov 2004 Posts: 366 Location: not here

It's not drastically bigger. My monitor itself is like a 14 inch screen or something. One of the tv's i hooked it up to was an 18 inch magnavox, the other was a 28 inch sony. Both pictures sucked, neither one was better than the other. The cords are all fine, they're all brand new.

thedarkness · Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Posts: 488

I'm gonna guess you're missing some drivers. I did some reading, and apparently a lot of people had issues with the drivers for this particular piece of hardware.

Google something along the lines of ATI Radeon X 1650 Pro with 512 MB DDR2 AGP 8X/4X driver download and be sure to scan every file you download for viruses. :\

nico · Administrator Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 823

Did you use a vga or hdmi connect? you might want to play around with the screen resolution, because wrong resolutions mess up the quality badly. Example; on a widescreen you may want to set the resolution to something like 1440*900. I don't know what exactly is the best setting in your situation, but you can easily find out yourself by messing around with the settings,

Greetz Nico