Anyone tested Parhelia's DVD-output quality?

[testjoe]

I'm trying to re-vamp my home theater PC a bit, removing the Sigma Designs XCard I'd bought since its buggy and doesn't allow shifting vertical & horizontal screen position like Matrox's control panel does on the G400/G550/Parhelia (the only other DECENT cards I've used before to output to TV besides R8500 AIW which was a POS and horrible output quality), and since I haven't yet found the perfect Component-Input capable TV yet to replace my S-Video input-only TV to entertain "Just go Component Out" suggestions, I'm wondering if anyone has A/B compared the DVD output quality via the S-Video output between a G400, G550 or Parhelia? i.e. does the "Gigacolor" option make any visible difference in real use playing back DVD's on a TV?

Joe T.

[Peter Aragon]

Hi Joe

I received my Parhelia last week, and before that I had a G450. I like the fact that you don't need to switch back in resolution to view a DVD movie (because of the poor overlay capabilities of the G450) Also the subtitles are of better quality, but I don't really notice the difference between 24 bit and 30 bit color, the motion compensation difference is also hard to tell.

But the cloning and zooming to TV quality is far better than the G450, better smoothing of text.

I think it is possible to see the difference between 24 and 30 bit when you're sitting up close to the screen, but hey, I'd like to see the first person to watch his movie at 20cm of the TV. I think the improved quality is meant for viewing a movie on your second monitor up close...

Any other opinions?

[ohloveme]

I think that its too hard to notice the difference between 8bit and 24bit with general 2D desktop monitor, but its enable to do with large screen with 3 crt projector ...

10bit video playback tech. is for madness AVmania ^^