OS X on a tube TV?

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Can OS X be readable on a plain old conventional tube TV? I've hooked up my PCs in the past as gaming/HTPC systems, but Windows looks horribly unreadable. I have also played with various HTPC systems that look decent (SageTV etc.). I know that MS has WebTV, which lets you surf the net from your couch...so there are ways of getting around the low resolution (using different fonts in larger sizes and whatnot). Does OS X have anything like that built in?

I'm toying with the idea of getting a Mini to replace my home theater system temporarily (for the next year or two). I'm moving in a couple of weeks and I won't have enough room for my whole 5.1 system with bass shakers, receiver, cabling, etc., but I should have enough room for a 2.1 setup with my TV and a Mini. My idea is basically to get a Mini, hack Front Row into it, use the AirClickUSB from Griffin with the Front Row mod, add on the Apple wireless keyboard and mouse, and hook up an EyeTV unit. I would then use a 2.1 computer speaker set for audio, direct from the Mini, and connect the Mini to my 27" TV via s-video through Apple's video adapter. This would give me a very compact DVD player with TiVo functionality and music capabilities. The cost would be somewhat higher than just using a DVD player, but I would get the convenience of having a tiny unit on top of my TV and the ability to store TV shows and my music collection all in one place.

I bought the first episode of Lost (season 1) on iTunes yesterday, both to check out video quality and to watch it (heard it was good, plus I'm a fan of 24 and it came highly recommended). I then hooked up my PC laptop (I don't have an adapter for my Cube) to my TV via s-video and my to my reciever with a minijack-to-RCA adapter and ran the show full-screen. It actually looked pretty good. You could tell it wasn't DVD quality, but the picture was good. It was roughly equivalent to a TV signal from cable. Sound was excellent. So, I now know that I can buy TV shows and movies from iTunes and it will work fine with my TV.

Thoughts and comments appreciated.
 
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kaidomac said:
Can OS X be readable on a plain old conventional tube TV? I've hooked up my PCs in the past as gaming/HTPC systems, but Windows looks horribly unreadable. I have also played with various HTPC systems that look decent (SageTV etc.). I know that MS has WebTV, which lets you surf the net from your couch...so there are ways of getting around the low resolution (using different fonts in larger sizes and whatnot). Does OS X have anything like that built in?

I'm toying with the idea of getting a Mini to replace my home theater system temporarily (for the next year or two). I'm moving in a couple of weeks and I won't have enough room for my whole 5.1 system with bass shakers, receiver, cabling, etc., but I should have enough room for a 2.1 setup with my TV and a Mini. My idea is basically to get a Mini, hack Front Row into it, use the AirClickUSB from Griffin with the Front Row mod, add on the Apple wireless keyboard and mouse, and hook up an EyeTV unit. I would then use a 2.1 computer speaker set for audio, direct from the Mini, and connect the Mini to my 27" TV via s-video through Apple's video adapter. This would give me a very compact DVD player with TiVo functionality and music capabilities. The cost would be somewhat higher than just using a DVD player, but I would get the convenience of having a tiny unit on top of my TV and the ability to store TV shows and my music collection all in one place.

I bought the first episode of Lost (season 1) on iTunes yesterday, both to check out video quality and to watch it (heard it was good, plus I'm a fan of 24 and it came highly recommended). I then hooked up my PC laptop (I don't have an adapter for my Cube) to my TV via s-video and my to my reciever with a minijack-to-RCA adapter and ran the show full-screen. It actually looked pretty good. You could tell it wasn't DVD quality, but the picture was good. It was roughly equivalent to a TV signal from cable. Sound was excellent. So, I now know that I can buy TV shows and movies from iTunes and it will work fine with my TV.

Thoughts and comments appreciated.

S-video connections will look pretty horrible, no matter what OS/computer you are using. Why? Because you are only getting ~480 lines of resolution with an svideo cable. If you want a computer to look good (or even decent) on a television, you are really going to have to get a TV with a DVI connection. That's my opinion at least.
 
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fisha

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Sorry I disagree, your not going to really going to have to get a DVI enabled TV.

From my own experience ( admittedly PAL and windows xp though ) the best settings seem to actually be with the scren resolution set to 800x600 rather than 640x480.

i've found that when i've needed to rely on it, a normal TV to be acceptable for use. As you say, cranking up the icon size and general font sizes, then the overall display becomes on the whole readable. No, its not super sharp, its not per-pixel mapping, but its usable.

Looking at Frontrow, from what i've seen, the fonts are generally large anyway, so i dont see a problem there.

It may get a bit cumbersome to use for things like email and internet use, but other than that, as long as the font sizes are set a little larger than normal, then you should be able to navigate around without too much issue.
 
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If I am going to use something in my home theater, I want it to look better than 'acceptable.' I've made the connection with an S-video cable and with DVI. The DVI is superior, and movies actually look good.

Like I said, that's just my opinion.
 
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fisha

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And thats fair enough - especially if its your main home theatre setup . . . but in this case its not. Its asked as being a temporary setup for a short while.



I think that if the downloaded stuff plays to an acceptable quality, then DVD's are going to be just as good if not better. In terms of music, the picture quality isn't going to matter as much.

Dont know about eye-TV . . . not seen it in action. From PC experience, i've never really thought much of TV cards in the computer . . . they've never seemed to match the tuner in the TV, or some other form of cable box / whatever.
 
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fisha said:
And thats fair enough - especially if its your main home theatre setup . . . but in this case its not. Its asked as being a temporary setup for a short while.



I think that if the downloaded stuff plays to an acceptable quality, then DVD's are going to be just as good if not better. In terms of music, the picture quality isn't going to matter as much.

Dont know about eye-TV . . . not seen it in action. From PC experience, i've never really thought much of TV cards in the computer . . . they've never seemed to match the tuner in the TV, or some other form of cable box / whatever.

You're right. S-video should work fine for a temporary setup.

So far, I've found that analog TV cards only produce mediocre results in PC's. I have not tried HDTV cards, but I have read that they are stunning.
 
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Do they even make regular televisions with DVI? I'm not going anywhere near HD for a long, long time. I either watch DVD movies or standard cable TV shows. Cable TV looks horrible on plasmas and LCDs, especially so on computer monitors. I don't want widescreen and I don't want HD. The only time I saw HD & cable look good was on a Sony tube set that was HD; for some reason it didn't look all grainy and pixelated.
 
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kaidomac said:
...Cable TV looks horrible on plasmas and LCDs, especially so on computer monitors...

My cable television looks fine on my 23" Apple display. I use the Alchemy TV DVR card in my G5, and it looks just like a regular TV (granted, you don't normally sit 2 feet from a regular TV, so my couch is further away.)
 
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kaidomac said:
Do they even make regular televisions with DVI? I'm not going anywhere near HD for a long, long time. I either watch DVD movies or standard cable TV shows. Cable TV looks horrible on plasmas and LCDs, especially so on computer monitors. I don't want widescreen and I don't want HD. The only time I saw HD & cable look good was on a Sony tube set that was HD; for some reason it didn't look all grainy and pixelated.

That's exactly the problem. Ordinary, standard-definition TV is all grainy and pixellated. Numerically speaking, standard US NTSC televisions are capable of about 480 visible vertical lines of resolution. European PAL televisions show about 570 lines. (Which explains why timswim78 dosn't mind it as much...he has 19% more to work with on his PAL TV)

Those 480-line cable TV signals look awful on a plasma TV with 768 lines of vertical resolution.

On the flipside, trying to squeeze a computer display into 480 lines makes for a poor experience. (It's actually much worse than the numbers show, because SD TVs aren't really built to show discrete horizontal "pixels" at all.)
 
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Bmw M Power05 said:
ive got the same general question. but i have component inputs so would something like this work for a good quality picture ?

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=405-011

Yes, it would actually be usable if your TV was decent and supported 720p, but that adapter doesn't work with all ATI graphics cards...


I would never want to do any real work on a computer plugged into a TV with s-video, only good for powerpoint presentations and maybe media center type applications.
 
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timswim78 said:
You're right. S-video should work fine for a temporary setup.

So far, I've found that analog TV cards only produce mediocre results in PC's. I have not tried HDTV cards, but I have read that they are stunning.

That's due to it's resolution. When I set my old PC at 800 x 600 and played some recorded Family Guy, and it looked fine. You can't expect 480i to look good at 1024 x 768 (or higher).

As for using your Mini, it should work fine, as long as you turn down the resolution.
 

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