PC Display questions...

[cvec7]

Ok, I have for the longest time been wanting to build a MCE (media center) PC to replace my 2 VCR's, DVD player, and boom-box which I use just for the FM. Anyway, I may now finally have the funds to build such a PC, however, it's still pretty budget oriented, and I figure I might as well order the stuff now while shipping is still cheap (I'm moving to alaska in a month).

Ok, so here's my question: Pretty much, no matter what, is text from a PC gonna look crappy on a regular TV? Or does it depend on the TV and graphics card you are using?

As I said, I'm on a fairly tight budget, so I don't really want to shell out the money for a 19" LCD. (I have to have LCD, no CRT for me.. )

But, the TV I'd be using is pretty decent, 20" flat-screen (not flat-panel) w/ S-video and component video-in (the one w/ green, blue and red) and the TV is pretty close to HD, but not quite there.
The card I'd be using would be the ATi Radeon X1300 All-In-Wonder as seen here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814102661

So bottom line, would I be able to use my TV as a regular computer monitor for regular computing tasks? I know it would be fine for Media Center since the text is big and all....



In case you're wondering here's the rest of my set-up...keep in mind it's budget oriented, but still a nice system w/ good upgradability...

Asus Vintage PE2 barebones socket-T mobo w/ SATA 150 and PCIe x16
80 GB WD Caviar SATA HDD
Samsung Lightscribe DVD burner
ATi X1300 AIW
512MB RAM
2.66 GHz Pentium D (64-bit)

And I think I'll give my copy of Vista Ultimate Ed. a try, and if I don't like it or it's too buggy or w/e, I'll switch on over to XP MCE...

 

[FastEddy]

You will be able to use a regular TV but your computer output will not be as nice as it is even on a cheap computer monitor. A Regular TV only has about a half of the lines as a monitor.

You would be wise to go with a minimum of 1 gig of ram and a 2nd Much larger HD. You are at what I would consider the minimum requirements on those 2 items. Both are cheap and worthy of an upgrade.

 

[cvec7]

Yea, It'd get upgraded eventually, I just went with some of my basic min. requirements.... since this is a budget project, but it would get a bigger HDD and more ram shortly down the road...and I've managed to deal with much less for much longer....my main PC only has an Athlon XP 1800+ w/ 1GB of RAM, and up untill last year, it was only a 20GB HDD, and now it's currently 40GB...
And I guess w/ that small amount of ram and storage, I guess I'd be much better off using MCE at first, then going to vista...

And I suppose I could buy a cheap 15" LCD for regular computing tasks, and then use the TV as a seccondary monitor for mulitmedia...

 

[BazzYboY]

And as for the TV Eddy is right, i use an LCD 19" wide screen mikomi tv as a second display for my laptop sometimes, and its not nearly half as sharp as the normaly laptop screen, however the graphics card is a bit crap

Better the graphics card and the screen better it will look

 

[X_Gamer7]

Better the graphics card and the screen better it will look

(I'm assumining you meant, "The better the graphics card, the better the picture will look.")

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I mean sure, if you have a very, very old graphics card, it won't look as nice as a newer generation card, but really it depends more on the inputs on your television. Take a $100 graphics card with s-video out and a $700 graphics card with s-video out, and they are going to look the same... not very good at all. The only way you are going to get a good picture from a televison is with a high definition inputs such as composite (not to be confused with the "colorstream" 480i), RGB, DVI, etc.

cvec7,
You have a nice base for a multimedia pc, but as suggested by FastEddy, you will want to upgrade to 1GB of RAM soon. I'm running 512mb on my computer, and I too am finding out that most games and applications nowadays run best with 1GB of RAM or more. Also, the video card you picked out is alright, but if you just save up a little more money, you will be very thankful in the end. The one you picked out only has 4 pixel pipelines, and a 128 bit memory interface. This cripples the performance A TON. For $100 more you could get the ATI AIW x1800xl, which has 16 pixel pipelines, and a 256 bit memory interface. In the end, you will be glad you did, because that card would be bound to last you until you die. Just my 2 cents.