Expect from tv-out picture quality?

[arono]

So, what can we expect from the tv-out function?

Will there be color distortion like in this video or is it just the camera?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDsse8nNnp0

and what will the resolution be?

[sadfist]

I tried it earlier today on a 1080p LCD. Quality wasn't great. Didn't spend any time messing with it.

[NvyUs]

its seems very good on this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYgiOvINlOA&feature=player_embedded

[bugelrex]

I tried it earlier today on a 1080p LCD. Quality wasn't great. Didn't spend any time messing with it.

How big was your tv and how would you describe the quality (jaggered?, pixelated?)

[sadfist]

How big was your tv and how would you describe the quality (jaggered?, pixelated?)

40", pixelated with the OS up on the screen. Blocky video. I can do some more formal testing if desired.

[Bratag]

I would imagine the quality and res would depend on the clip you are playing. You play a low encoded clip on a 50 inch TV and nothing in the world is going to make it look like a dvd

[sadfist]

Yeah and I wasn't sure what the quality of the couple vids i threw on were so I didn't really mess with it. Just having the phone UI up on the screen looked pretty nasty though.

EDIT: 640x272 H.264, bitrate: 1,163

[Rocketman]

The N900 outputs analog, composite video. It looks like it can output PAL or NTSC. NTSC is 30 fps to PAL's 24fps, but PAL has more scanlines (higher effective resolution) and doesn't suffer from the color/hue problems of NTSC. Both are rather crappy in today's digital era, however. The ultimate perceived resolution of both is sub-vga in quality. I would kill for some way to output HDMI (with audio channels, please!) from a NIT. Would be great for presentations, showing pictures, etc. A lot of the high end digital SLRs have HDMI outs built in and if you use a proprietary adapter cable, the bezel space taken on the device can be quite minimal.

[arono]

sadfist, so is it something you would use for showing photos and videos? Are the colors very different from the display?

[christexaport]

Uh, TV out is old Nokia tech, and it works great. It isn't like on the iPhone, but a full rendering of the device screen at all times. It looks great on an old school CRT TV. I use it on a 32 inch Panasonic all of the time on my N95 8GB. Not sure about a larger HDTV, but the videos I've seen look like a similar result. Perfect for showing photos and videos, web browsing, gaming, etc. In fact, look back at the Bounce videos for a good view.

[arono]

Hmm ok, but I was really not happy with my 5800's output. The colors were faint and the picture had strange artifacts, much like the video I posted above. Would you, christexaport, say this video is worse or better than with your n95?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDsse8nNnp0

[nashith]

I don't have a N900 at hand (yet), but some of the reasons for bad video output could be that playback source is low grade, interference and the most obvious. almost all analog look crappy on huge HD screens. Sometime progressive scanning helps, but the multiple conversions (Digital (source)->Analog (composite output)->Digital (HD TV)) will cause a lot of problems. The TV would also have to interpolate the analog signal to fit the huge resolution and this would blow out any problems like interference and compression artifacts and also would introduce artifacts of its own. But I guess composite is still available everywhere and its not a bad choice for the time being.

[christexaport]

looking at the video, and comparing the colors on the TV with those on the display, I think the video was captured in a low light situation. Just trust me, the TV out works as it should. Just like a game system or anything else. Good quality you'd expect from RCA outputs. I've watched movies in a friends car via the same outputs, and no one noticed.

[mobiledivide]

Any analog output to a big screen TV will not look very good, ask any Wii owner who uses the more able component 480p to their LCD/Plasmas. The only thing that will make the output look any good is a good analog to digital scaler in the monitor itself otherwise its simply a passable image. For reference I also use a video out from my 5800XM to a 46inch Toshiba Regza, and its passable in a pinch to view photos etc but far from nice.

[koivjann]

I have tested the video output with my N900. The picture is quite good when using the 42" TV screen only for extra screen for device.

When using it for flash videos from internet it is quite poor. Videos with 1 Mbps are flussy and with 2Mbps have better quality but have some discontinuity. 1 Mbps is good in N900 screen.

Nokia own videos 9 and Nokia N900 which are in the device seem to have very good quality also on 42" screen. The only thing I have to do is to put more brightness on my TV.

I use to see You tube videos via N900 and TV cos it's so easy to plug it to TV.

[dreadnought]

Slightly off-topic but still related (I hope), is it possible to output from the N900 (composite) to a computer monitor (VGA)? On this page I found various converters, but I wasn't sure if they were the right ones:

http://www.climaxdigital.co.uk/epages/BT3449.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/BT3449/Categories/videoconverter/vc002

If you could output to a computer monitor, how would it look on the screen? Would it stretch to fill the screen or would there be borders around the display due to the lower resolution?

[Carl Ed]

Slightly off-topic but still related (I hope), is it possible to output from the N900 (composite) to a computer monitor (VGA)? On this page I found various converters, but I wasn't sure if they were the right ones:

http://www.climaxdigital.co.uk/epages/BT3449.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/BT3449/Categories/videoconverter/vc002
You're basically looking at a video scaler to do that.

The box you linked to seems to be exactly that, but quality will probably be low at that price.

If you could output to a computer monitor, how would it look on the screen? Would it stretch to fill the screen or would there be borders around the display due to the lower resolution?
This is what I want to know. The N900 has a 5:3 aspect screen, which is different from the 4:3, 16:10 and 16:9 screens that most of us have.

Stretching the image isn't so big a deal when it comes to navigating the desktop or having an SMS conversation, but it's not very nice when you're watching video or playing a game.

If that's what it's doing hopefully someone will modify the video out software to at least have some control over aspect ratios, or ideally output pillarboxed, anamoprhic, vertically unscaled video in NTSC mode.

[christexaport]

I don't beleive it changes the aspect.

[rcull]

This looks like the 4th one down on your link but much cheaper.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.28534

I've ordered one - we'll see :)

[mobilefan]

Some how when I use the TV Out function with the N900, my TV screen is not completely filled (not full screen), even though the N900 is playing it full screen. How can I get the N900 to output to full screen on my TV, cause right now I get black horizontal bars on top and bottom of my TV screen. Even if I am using the phone like on menu screens (not watching videos or surfing web), I still don't get a full picture displayed on my TV screen. My tv is an 32" LCD HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio.

Looking at the above Youtube video, the person seem to have full screen on his output.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDsse8nNnp0

How can I achieve that?

[attila77]

The N900 resolution is not a 16:9 one. You must accomodate this aspect difference on the TV - either by stretch or by crop if you want to get rid of black borders.