Another one for you Tech dudes

[Az]

cable for free? Wow.

how would they pay for all the crap TV shows, then?

[Wraith]

--"If you want better performance from your PC, I suggest you invest in a fast SCSI-3 hard disk and controller card. "

That depends on what you're doing. Most desktop applications aren't going to give you an appreciable difference with this, although there are excpetions.

A much better option from a price/performance POV right now is SATA.

Wraith
Engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

[Urban Ranger]

Video encoding

[alva]

Originally posted by Azazel
cable for free? Wow.

how would they pay for all the crap TV shows, then?

Hight taxes and we still have to pay royalty IIRC.
Note that this doesn't include any Pay-tv channels/movie-channels(those channels you usaly need a decoder to see them)

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Cruddy
These cards are usually called TV cards. The onboard graphics you have should work fine with such a TV card. In the UK most units are made by Hauppage - an older PCI will be fine, so long as you get the software with it.

Sure? Since the output of the TV card needs to go into the video card, otherwise you won't be able to see any TV shows on screen.

[Cruddy]

Having read Happauge's website, I must agree that the onboard graphics must support DirectDraw. If they don't, an additional graphics card that does is required.

As a suitable 32Mb card would cost about £10 or less, I wouldn't consider it a huge burden. Rothy might disagree.

And to Rothy's additional question about reclaiming the 8Mb of memory the graphics used - PCI graphics cards typically need a shadow portion of the system memory. I fiddle about with these settings but it doesn't make a great deal of difference, to be honest.

[Cruddy]

Just wanted to add, on the SATA/SCSI3 debate - at least we both agree that a fast hard disk is desirable, even if all it does is make Windows boot faster.

The problem is that Serial ATA is one step beyond vapourware on this side of the Atlantics, wheras SCSI-3 can be got secondhand pretty cheap. You can mail order SATA drives and controllers but it's not on the high street yet.

Also, there is no way I am ever going to buy first generation of a new technology, no matter how good the specification is. Sell me something that's been around for a few years and where the pitfalls are known. I am not an unpaid beta-tester.

Finally, the improvement in the performance of Civ3 (which does chuck files on and off the hard disk every time you open an advisor screen) is partly due to how slow and unreliable my old hard disk was.

[Worthingtons]

Thanks for all the information guys. I went out and bought a Happauge TV adapter card as Cruddy Suggested, a basic card, and the onboard graphics seem to work alright. Quite happy with the results and i might even get one for my own PC, although i want to wait till I can pick up digital TV and get all the free channels, that'd be ace.

One problem with my gf's PC however is that i cant get the damn thing bright enough... it's just too dark even when i turn the brightness on the monitor to 100%!!

Cheers
Matt

[Cruddy]

I have this problem with my monitor as well, HOWEVER by using the Settings/Display/Advanced options I can boost the gamma output. This boosts my Windows brightness but doesn't help with DOS or non DirectX games...

If you don't have a set of drivers for that onboard graphics set (and, more to the point, a set of utilities to go with them) you won't see the option - windows does not let you play with brightness settings, that is down to the gfx card manufacturers to sort out the software themselves.

In other words - if you can't find a set of utils to adjust it with from the onboard gfx supplier, you will need that extra graphics card anyway. I make do with a TNT2 - it can't do regular DirectX games very well but it's fine for everything else.

EDIT: Either that or a new monitor. NAH, that's a dumb idea. Maplins are doing a digital card for about £80 - but as noted above, I give new tech a few years to get reliable before I buy.

[Paul Hanson]

Try adjusting the gamma settings, if there are any.

[Az]

Hight taxes and we still have to pay royalty IIRC.
Note that this doesn't include any Pay-tv channels/movie-channels(those channels you usaly need a decoder to see them)

What do you mean "taxes"? is the cable TV government owned in Beligium? I guess you euros are a bunch of godless commies, after all!

oh, and I bet our taxes are higher. But we use them to build tanks.

[Worthingtons]

Cheers again Cruddy.

We use the taxes to pay for the Refugees running from your tanks.... we like to give them enough of an allowance so that they can probably buy a tank themselves :/

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Azazel
[q]

oh, and I bet our taxes are higher. But we use them to build tanks.

Beats me how you have the fuel for them. Or do you get that as part of the "biggest aid receiver on the planet" package?

I'm just reciting what I heard. You may well not be the biggest aid receivers on the planet.

But it would be a shame to build all those tanks and not be able to race them.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Paul Hanson
That's an ISA slot. It's obsolete and you won't need it.

I actually use an ISA slot.

[Skanky Burns]

Quick, everybody point and laugh!