Re: Quality of Mac Mini if connected to standard television

In article <tim.streater-439519.13005309032007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Tim Streater <tim.streater@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <matty_d-F41DDF.22535309032007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Matthew Smith <matty_d@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1172506823.822507.59380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Alex" <samalex@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So... my question is, what kinda quality am I looking at if we connect
a Mac Mini to a standard television? If the screen resolution was
kicked down to say 800x600 or lower, what kinda quality of text are we
looking at? I've seen the Nintendo Wii's Opera browser on a non-HD
television, and it looks passable (readable). Would a Mac Mini
connected to a TV have similar quality?

You won't get 800x600. Standard NTSC television is 640x480. European TV
(PAL) is 768x576. You can't get a higher resolution on a TV as they are
not multisync.

They are certainly multi-something, at least here. My PAL video player
will play NTSC tapes and convert the colour signal to PAL. The TV then
happily syncs to 525 lines at 30fps instead of 625 at 25.

Multisync TV seems very common in countries with PAL TV. Of late, most
of them in Australia will handle PAL and NTSC. For that matter, VCRs
also often handle PAL and NTSC without any great problems.

I gather this dual handling is far less common in the USA.

As for connecting a computer to a TV, the results I've seen on a
standard TV range from poor to terrible. I imagine HD TV might do
better, if it really is an HD set. Some of the stuff sold here and
claimed to be HD is outright fraud.

I gave up on TV sets last year (too much crap TV being sold when I
wanted to replace an old set), and instead use a Dell 24 inch LCD
computer monitor (1920x1200) as a TV (it also has two computers and a
DVD player connected). It scales pictures just fine. Results are
reasonable for TV (analog available only), good for DVD, up to excellent
running (rare) samples of HD quality 1080p video from a computer.
However I don't have a space for a TV, so anyone thinking living room
will probably not want to go that way.

--
http://www.ericlindsay.com
.

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