#VGA to NTSC card
13 messages in this thread
I'm planning on getting a VGA to NTSC card for outputting Animator
fli's. I'm running it on a XT (don't laugh) and I'm looking for
a budget priced card, but one that does a decent job. Does anyone
have any suggestions or experience with this?
Steve:
I just bought an Nth-TV board from Nth Graphics (list about $1500), and
frankly, I'm not too impressed so far. I may have a defective card, but it
refuses to make correct colors in 3D Studio and AniPro. It could also be
their drivers, but it also won't work right using the VESA drivers that
came with the software. Luckily, I have it on an evaluation basis, so it
may go back.
The Windows drivers also aren't very good, as they are losing all my
TrueType fonts, which means that when I change video modes in Windows, I
also have to reinstall all the fonts, which is a pain. They claim that
their drivers don't touch the font files, but it still does it. Of course,
if you're running an XT, you're probably not running Windows anyway, so it
shouldn't be a concern for you.
This card is 16-bit, so I'm not sure you can even use it in an XT class
machine.
I'd appreciate anybody else jumping in here if they've been having the same
troubles as me.
-KLF
thats the 5 th person i have herd say that about the nth card. and i had a
friend buy one and return it the next day because it just didn't work right
sherwood
Oh Great…
Well, I guess that's why we get hardware on eval basis. Right now I'm in
the middle of a PPT session with my machine, and I chickened out and yanked
the card, replacing it with the old Diamond SpeedStar. I'll try once more
when I get my machine back, but it looks as this one may be going back too.
SO… To repeat the question, what's the NTSC card of choice out there?
-KLF
i use the videologic mediator. it is not a card but a seperate device that
connects to the output of the vga card. it can output ntsc,s-vhs and pal.
and has a host of settings to tinker with. list is 3000 but i have seen
them go out for around 2000.
another on is the rgb spectrum units but you might as well get a frame
accurate deck and a diaquest for the price of those. but they are nice.
sherwood
Ken, I appreciate you getting back to me so quickly. Thanks for all
the info.
We handle the VISION VGA-HC which has hi-color support and their
proprietary flicker-filter. It is about $700 though. There are cheaper ones
out there…
Doug,
I thought the VGA-HC did not have NTSC output?
Ray
That's what the HC is about! Video out! (But not in high-color mode, if
that's what you mean.) Call Betty at GRAFX (714) 240-7105 and she will fax
you a spec sheet and price.
Doug,
Everex was another of those companies that gets poor marks on first
impressions. Customer service said they had no specs on the Vision 16 and
were unable to assist me in diagnosing my problem. They kept babbling about
proprietary information and a policy of no communication from the support
team to the "engineers". After raising a big fuss, they finally admitted
that the Vision 16 had a problem with S-Video that was unsolvable at the
time. A week back they called to let me know they expect a fix by September
of October. I told them their card was long gone… Anyhow, at the time
they insisted that the HC was strictly a high color output card for VGA
monitors, i.e. it had no NTSC output… Just proves my point about
conflicting messages and poor customer support.
Ray
Well, no matter how much I like a product, I wouldn't recommend it to
anyone who doesn't feel comfortable with the company. I have had very good
luck with customer support. Maybe its because I am a dealer??? Anyway,
someone had a Magni producer for sale a while back. Maybe that's another
way to go…
Stephen,
A couple months back I went through the same excercise you are now
contemplating. I started with an Everex Vision 16 ($595), the colors did
not match the VGA output but if you were patient, the output was
acceptable. I returned it because of a defect with the S-Video IN and OUT
(IN is used to overaly animation over live video), I moved to a Truevision
VideoVGA ($895) the output was very poor and all the colors where even
farther away from the VGA than the Everex…returned. I saw a product
called VGA producer by Magni systems which takes the output of your
existing video card (from the feature connector on the card) and does a
reasonable NTSC ($2000)…I finally bit the bullet and ended up with the
only card that produced what to my eyes was acceptable output, a Truevision
Targa+ 16/32 ($2595). Even this one suffers from NTSC artifacts (color
bleed, etc) as it has a "consumer" encoder… I am afraid that the answer
to your question is probably that there are no 8 bit cards that I can
recommend (all of the above are 16 bit…) The cheapest acceptable
solution, though, would be the Everex EV-626 Vision 16 if you can live with
the color shift and pronounced NTSC artifacts.
Ray
Ray, thanks for getting back to me so quickly. The info's very
useful.