I just hooked up an unused PC to my TV so that I can use it while sitting on my couch. First, let me just say, I understand that the quality of the picture will not look as good on my TV as it does on a monitor. WI turn on my computer, the POST screen looks fine (all the text is redable), the boot menu text is fine, even the windows start up screen looks fine (both the Windows logo and the text). However, once I get to the desktop, everything looks horrible. I can only make out the text on icons because I know what they should say. I have tried increasing the icon size, text size, and playing with the resolution, yet nothing helps. Why does the quality suddenly drop once I'm in windows? -Ryan Adams http://members.cox.net/rtadams89/

are your video card tv out settings correct? ntsc for usa & japan, pal for pretty much the rest of the world Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.' icq 10183575

Windows uses a different mode of display. Before you enter windows, the video card and monitor or in what's called 'alphanumeric mode'. The video card just sends alpha characters to the monitor. When you are in windows they switch to a graphical display. The video card sends bytes to the monitor with information on how to display each pixel on the screen. Why the graphics mode shows up so poorly on the TV is because of the poor resolution analog TVs have (less than 640x480). If you had a high definition TV, it would probably look a lot better. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

If the display was i nthis so called "alphanumeric mode", how is the windows logo and startup progress bar displayed? Is there a way to improve the quality without buying a new TV? -Ryan Adams http://members.cox.net/rtadams89/

Excellent question!! I'm not sure if that is done before or after the switch to windows or not. But there are tricks used in alphanumeric mode to display graphic images. They use speial character codes and there is a way to display colors. It's not very efficient, it takes a lot of work by the programmer, but it can be done. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!