Follow-up on connecting PC to TV with baluns

[mm]

Thank you again Fin West and Peter D,

I just got the balun transformer things from UPS today, and I hooked
it up tonight, and with very little trouble, it's working.

I did have to go into the ATI software that goes with my new-used
video card, to enable to the second video output, and there it was!

I used the 100 foot piece of Cat-6 I had bought for a wired LAN. (I"m
using wireless now instead.)

Peter and Fin, I checked ebay like you suggested, and found a pair of
baluns for 20 dollars! Plus 13 shipping. A lot cheaper than I
expected. I searched for them separately and found 3 websites selling
them for 80 dollars a piece!! They were burglar alarm sites and I
figured they were marking them up some, maybe from the 60 or so each
that svideo was charging for something similar, but 20 for a pair
seemed really cheap. But quality seems pretty darn good. I don't
have any digital tv's, and 1 of them is 9" and two are 14". One of
the two "big" ones gives a "dotless" image. On the worst of them, I
can still read my email, though not so easily. I figure the baluns
are working right.

I have the url for the ebay listing if anyone wants.

 

[mm]

BTW, one interesting thing is that everything shows in the tv picture,
except (so far) the DVD I'm watching with Cyberlink Power DVD. Even
while watching that, I can see everything else on the screen, but when
it's full screen, the tv screen is blank. Then if I right click and a
menu of commands comes up, that shows up on the tv,

Of course this couldn't be the fault of the balun, but it's
interesting.

I had the same thing in win98 and winXP, with the same program but
different versions of it.

But when I streamed an episode of "24" via Firefox, that showed on the
monitor and on all 3 tvs I've used so far, including at full screeen.



Another intersting thing is that at first the XP image on the monitor
got shorter, and the icons on the XP desktop got squashed vertically.
The ATI help file anticipates this, and refers users to a screen that
it has for adjusting monitor position and zize, but whenever I pulled
on one side, it just moved the image. I couldn't get it until I
changed from Advanced controls to Basic contorl, and then it went back
to full height when I wasn't looking. Yet even know the two POST
screens aren't full height anymore. (the one where the memory is
counted off and the one which lists all the peripherals.) and probably
not the "Choice between 99 and XP" screen. I think that has a black
bar at the top and bottom also but it's a mostly black screen so I'm
not sure. Yet the win98 screen was never shorter than it should be,
and winXP starts fine now (after starting twice with 1" black bars at
the top and bottom and half-inch bars at the sides.)


One more thing, the baluns come with left and right audio RCA jacks,
and with an S-video jack. They also including two 6-inch S-video
patch cords, that connected the jack on the balun with the jack on the
video card, or the jack on the DVDR. My RF modulator also has RCA and
S-video input jacks, 4 sets of them.

But I'm thinking by going through the Philips DVDR, I may be getting
some measure of amplification. I'll read the manual or ask on the
Philips DVDR forum (part of AVSForum). Would an RF modulator provide
anything equivalent to amplification?

 

[PeterD]

BTW, one interesting thing is that everything shows in the tv picture,
except (so far) the DVD I'm watching with Cyberlink Power DVD. Even
while watching that, I can see everything else on the screen, but when
it's full screen, the tv screen is blank. Then if I right click and a
menu of commands comes up, that shows up on the tv,

Of course this couldn't be the fault of the balun, but it's
interesting.

Cyberlink Power DVD has some limitations (designed in, IMHO) and that
is probably what you are seeing. Seems that they want to show things
in certain resolutions only (instead of stretching/shrinking as
needed), try to window on higher resolutions (a crappy solution). I
believe it is intended to prevent you from having higher quality than
would have appeared on a standard DVD player. However, today's DVD
players far exceed those standards.

 

[mm]

Cyberlink Power DVD has some limitations (designed in, IMHO) and that
is probably what you are seeing. Seems that they want to show things
in certain resolutions only (instead of stretching/shrinking as
needed), try to window on higher resolutions (a crappy solution). I
believe it is intended to prevent you from having higher quality than
would have appeared on a standard DVD player. However, today's DVD
players far exceed those standards.

Well, I only need to play this one DVD. So if I have to sit at the
desk chair for another hour, it's fine. I bought it on ebay and
dind't notice that it said, plainly, in RED, that it was PAL format.
So it won't play on my DVD player. I didn't expect a vendor in
Cleveland to be selling something that wouldn't play on everything in
the US. Other vendors had it in NTSC for even a dollar less. I just
finished playing it, "Burn", with Charlton Heston, and it's a very
good movie, about revolution in 19th century sugar colonies in the
Antilles islands. Fictional but maybe not far off.

Another interesting thing is that while PowerDVD worked fine in win98,
in WinXP it stopped when it got to playing the actual disk. I looked
at all the settings but found nothing. I jumped to the conclusion
that early releases of PowerDVD didn't know about regions, but it was
region 0. So then I jumped to the conclusion that it couldn't play
PAL, but PAL is referred to in the Help files. So I looked even
harder at settings, and I finally tried to have it play from Drive F,
which isn't even a DVD drive, only CD, and then I went back to E, and
since then it has worked fine.
I'm still really happy with the baluns. I'll run the CAT-6 up through
the attic when it's warmer up there. Now it runs down the hall.