FYI: Using HD TV Out on NVIDA Graphic Card with XP

[George Tyndall]

Ever since we got our 52-inch Samsung, I've been puzzled by the fact that, when the VGA connector on the TV is connected to the DVI socket on the computer with an adapter, and the TV is set to 1920x1080 as instructed, I would nevertheless get a square rather than a widescreen image.

Last night I tried using the HD TV Out socket and plugging the red, green and blue connectors that come with the graphics card into the TV's second set of "Component" inputs (Set 1 is for my Canon HV 30).

Nothing changed--until I read the fine print on the box for my video card, which states that the HD TV output works only with Vista.

So I went to the NVIDIA web site where, yes, I found a driver that is specifically target to XP MCE 2005. The driver was published on the site only 2 days ago!

I downloaded the driver and Eureka! I now have 1920x1080 widescreen on the Samsung.

[Paul LS]

I used to use the HDTV component out from my graphics card to connect to my HDTV. I recently changed graphics cards and now use HDMI from the graphics card which carries both the video and audio. Previously I had a seperate connection for my audio.

[George Tyndall]

I ... now use HDMI from the graphics card which carries both the video and audio. Previously I had a seperate connection for my audio.

Interesting that you should mention that.

My older computer does not have HDMI, so I am unable to do that but even if I had it I would not use it for the audio, the reason being that my sound card has 7.1 speaker capability and sounds great with the 7.1 speaker set that Creative sells for about $100 (designed for gamers but sound is very good for music, too).

With regard to the TV, it has 3 HDMI inputs but, once again, I am not using HDMI for the audio portion (only the video), and here is why: The instructions for the Onkyo Home Theater specifically state that, if I use HDMI rather than the R and L audio outputs from my Blu-ray disk player and cable box as the source for my audio, all I will get is "pass through" stereo coming from the TV's built-in speakers and not 7.1 coming from the Onkyo.

How the Onkyo is able to produce 7.1 from only R and L audio outputs from the Blu-ray player and cable box, I do not know. Do you understand how that is possible?