Follow-up on connecting PC to TV with baluns

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?

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.