: Can anyone please help me with the following questions regarding hooking
: up a PC to a TV (PAL)?
: 1. What is a scan convertor?
It depends. It can mean a NTSC to PAL converter, VGA to NTSC, etc.
: 2. Are they only available in VGA, or SVGA also?
You can get both, but some do both. Obviously the better the
resolution/picture quality the more $$$$ it will cost.
: 3. I have heard of 640 x 480 scan convertors, does this mean they are
: SVGA?
Yes, they can do SVGA, although you may get a slight-to-extreme picture
shift (as in location on screen).
: 4. Has anyone connected their PC to a TV for game playing (eg. Nascar,
: Indycar 2 or GP2 in SVGA)?
Yes. I bought mine to record my modem races for F1GP. I got some great
races on VCR tape. It works for anything else, of course, but the text
modes are not very crisp.
: 5. Is there much degradation of picture quality?
Depends. Games will have a slight degradation, but text will have big
degradation. Of course, you can always buy a 'good' converter, but that
will be more $$$$.
The one I have has two video outputs. One is for the TV, the other is for
your computer monitor. That way you can use your computer monitor to get
good text and switch to the TV for either taping or watching a bigger
picture.
: 6. Is it worthwhile?
Yes. Especially if you tape record the stuff and review it to help
improve yourself.
: 7. Is it expensive?
Can be, but the one I'm using is "TV Gamer Plus" by SIIG. Text is not
real good, but games are just fine. It cost $99, on sale.
You can also buy a line doubler, but then you have to spend more money.
I would suggest buying it from a store that has a return policy. I bought
mine from a store like that and was planning on buying it to tape a few
races and then return it saying it wasn't good quality. Well, I decided
to keep it and it works quite well.
