Beyond S-video?


1magus

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I have a problem, when I finally do save up for the Pandora and get the TV OUT it has to be progressive scan compatible ( I run a 32" HDTV 720p with a very poor de interlacer ) which means anything below component looks like wellllll lets say crap.
I was wondering if eventually something beyond an S-Video cable would be made for the Pandora and possible a docking station with support for S-Video +?
 
TylerAW said:
I have a problem, when I finally do save up for the Pandora and get the TV OUT it has to be progressive scan compatible ( I run a 32" HDTV 720p with a very poor de interlacer ) which means anything below component looks like wellllll lets say crap.
I was wondering if eventually something beyond an S-Video cable would be made for the Pandora and possible a docking station with support for S-Video +?
A docking station is possible, but It wouldn't be able to output anything better than S-Video.

-God Ginrai
 
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But why? Are you saying its impossible to set the Pandora into pScan mode?
Than what do I do? If my TV wont de-interlace things?!
 
TylerAW said:
But why? Are you saying its impossible to set the Pandora into pScan mode?
Than what do I do? If my TV wont de-interlace things?!
IIRC, the chip can output to two sources, one being Composite/S-Video, the other being what you want. However, the other is connected to the screen, so the only one not being used is the S-Video/Composite.

I'm not completely sure if that is right, but that's what I seem to remember. There's been plenty of topics about this, so just use the search function if you want a better explanation.

-God Ginrai
 
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The more interesting question is why would you buy a TV that is THAT bad at showing S-Video sources?

About a year/18 months ago, I bought a 32" LCD HDTV for a school I work for - it has every connector known to man (2xSCART, S-Video, RGB, Composite, YUV, VGA, HDMI, and even good-old "analog aerial"), FreeView built in, thin enough to go on a wall and all for £350. And it does *perfect* display from any of those ports without any problem at all. In fact, we use it as a scrolling display for some advertising material for the school (run using PowerPoint at 1280x1024 from an old PC which is 50m away using a Cat5-VGA extender), the caretaker uses it to watch football on FreeView and it also gets everything from DVD's, video players, camcorders etc. plugged into it on special occasions.

S-Video should be able to easily provide a clean signal for a 32" TV without problems (in school, we have projectors projecting 8-foot images from a S-Video, or even just plain composite, connector without quality issues). If your TV doesn't, then you need a better TV, not to splat expensive chips, connectors and bandwidth into an embedded device - it's not the S-Video or the device output that's the problem, your TV just isn't capable of handling it.

I *hate* buying new things so I'm still on an old 37" 4:3 CRT TV personally, the image for which is usually bigger when showing a widescreen movie than a lot of "widescreen" TV's! I love how many people have fallen into the trap of buying HDTV's without checking how good their SD picture is (which about 10% of the time is utterly diabolical) - the manufacturers do it deliberately so that they can show you the "difference". And the same people fall for it again with BluRay vs DVD, 4:3 vs widescreen, etc.
 
You may also have deinterlace capability in your standalone DVD player or recorder. I know that my progressive scan DVD recorder will process input for antenna or cable on the coax, video, s-video, or composite inputs, and put prog. scan output on the composite output as a pass through.
I've seen reviews of DVD players which will do this as well, but its more likely to be a feature on DVD recorders.
Go to
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers
for details about specific players or recorders.
You can pick them up real, real cheap these days as everyone is upgrading to Blu-ray players.
 
There are a couple possible solutions, neither is too appealing. The board can output to two LCD displays up to 1920x1080 (or is it 1200?) if they are "smart" panels, ie have their own ram and 8-16bit interface (taken directly from here. I do not know of a converter dock could be hacked up to take advantage of this output and then output that into something usable. It wouldn't be easy.

The second option is outputting to another device via USB. Expensive, large, and would use a lot of power. You might also have to make your own drivers.
 
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The third option would be doing some nasty modding, hijacking the LCD output and then, possibly with some converting, you'd have perfect digital output.
 
Etinin said:
The third option would be doing some nasty modding, hijacking the LCD output and then, possibly with some converting, you'd have perfect digital output.
That's pretty much exactly what I just said
 
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fischju2000 said:
Etinin said:
The third option would be doing some nasty modding, hijacking the LCD output and then, possibly with some converting, you'd have perfect digital output.
That's pretty much exactly what I just said


But I'm sure a lot more people understood it by the way he explained it than yours. (I understood you, but not everyone will. His is in layman's terms)

-God Ginrai
 
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