8800GTX DVI to old HDMI TV?

[CaptNKILL]

My brother wants to use his PC (down stairs) with his TV (up stairs) and because of his current setup (he has the down stairs TV connected to it already via a VGA to S-Vid converter box) he only has two options. Either use HDMI or composite video (bleghh).

Cost is definitely a factor, so expensive converters are out of the questions.

I'm not very familiar with HDMI and TVs in general but he has an 8800GTX (one from late '06... when they were released) with two DVI and a TV Out. He also has an Auzentech Xplosion sound card.

My main concern is with his TV and his video card.

The TV is a rather old Toshiba 720P\1080i CRT HDTV, I believe this is it:
http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/tacpassets-images/models/md26h82/docs/MD26H82_spec.pdf (spec sheet)
http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/tacpassets-images/models/md26h82/docs/MD26H82_om_e.pdf (manual)

I was surprised that it even had HDMI, so I don't know if there are any issues with older HDMI TVs.

With the video card, I'm fairly certain that the 8800GTX doesn't have SPDIF pass through support through the DVI. Are there any other issues with sticking a DVI-HDMI adapter on this card other than the lack of audio over HDMI?

Also, any other suggestions or tips will be helpful.

I understand this is far from a perfect setup, but he's trying to make use of what he has available without breaking the bank. He would normally just use his PC and TV down stairs but he has a 1 year old daughter and its become nearly impossible for him to spend any time on his recently upgraded computer (Core 2 Quad @ 3.6Ghz, 4Gb DDR2, 8800GTX...) so he'd like to be able to do it from the living room up stairs.

BTW, www.monoprice.com is the only thing that's made this even remotely possible. You can get two 25 foot HDMI cables for $15 a piece, or a 50 foot composite A\V cable for a measly $12. 16 foot USB cables with built in repeaters are like $11. Even a new video converter box would only cost $27.

EDIT: Also, are there any issues with running 40-50 feet of HDMI, coax digital audio, RCA stereo or USB cables?

[seeker]

The only thing that I know along these lines is that with my Acer monitor, it doesn't work using a composite cable (with DVI on one end, and HDMI on the other). Since my video card only had dual DVI outputs, I had to use a cable with DVI on both ends.

[CaptNKILL]

I guess I'll post an update on this, just in case anyone else tries to do something similar.

The whole setup worked beautifully. :)

A generic DVI-HDMI adapter from monoprice sent the picture to the TV from the 8800GTX. In the TV's settings we switched the HDMI audio setting from HDMI to DVI to enable the RCA stereo inputs, which made the sound work immediately (running from the front channel output on the Xplosion while the down stairs sound system was still connected to optical).

We had to use Ultramon to create profiles and shortcuts to put on the desktops for the up stairs and down stairs computers to switch the Primary setting between the two. And that seems to work great. I was a little surprised that this was even required though. Hopefully Windows 7 or a later nvidia driver adds a feature like this.

Anyways, we ran the TV output at 1280x720 and turned off SVM in the TV's settings to clean up the picture. Its an older CRT HDTV so it doesn't look real great but its definitely better than an SDTV.

Other than that, everything went very smoothly. The USB, HDMI and RCA audio cables all work fine at that distance.

One major snag was getting some kind of power on by keyboard function. That doesn't work with wireless keyboards so we just used the Sleep function which works surprisingly well.

Also, the touch pad on our Adesso mini keyboard is a little annoying because it has tap-to-click and there aren't any drivers to disable it, but after getting used to it its fine.

All in all it was a great idea and it worked perfectly. We were playing Burnout Paradise for 4 hours last night with a 360 wireless controller. The PC was down stairs doing all the work, and we were up stairs on the couch enjoying some ultra smooth (60fps+ constant, 720P, 8xAA) gaming while the baby was taking a nap next to us. :lol:

[crainger]

Good think seeker was there to help CaptN.

[CaptNKILL]

Good think seeker was there to help CaptN.

:wonder:

[Rakeesh]

Didn't notice this thread earlier, but yeah HDMI is basically DVI with a few extensions, and they are pin-compatible. If your TV is compliant with either, it shouldn't ever care about whether or not there is an audio signal. A DVI tv should just ignore the audio data coming in it the source was HDMI and included audio, and an HDMI tv won't care if its source doesn't include audio.

Assuming the TV is fully compliant anyways, it will break compliance with either standard if it behaves oddly in these situations.

As for your USB cables, you may consider getting a powered hub (e.g. includes an AC adapter) to put near the TV. Some devices, e.g. feedback joysticks and the like, and portable hard disks if you ever use those, won't like running that long distance without some kind of local power source.

Good choice on going with monoprice though btw, they have some of the best prices I've ever seen on cables, and the quality is great. A retailer that actually doesn't do you up the butt when it comes to cable prices while pretending its a good deal, imagine that.

[CaptNKILL]

Another update to this thread.

My brother bought a Vizio 42" 1080P 120Hz LCD to replace the old 26" a few months ago. I also bought a Blu-Ray drive and an external USB enclosure which we use to watch BluRay movies on the computer. It works beautifully, even with it connected to a USB hub (filled with 5 other devices) which is hooked to the end of 50 feet of USB cords.

Last night we got his home theater system all set up with the speakers mounted and the wires hidden behind molding. The TV is connected to the DirectTV HD-DVR receiver via HDMI and to the PC using HDMI and RCA stereo audio. The home theater system (a 3-4 year old Sony HTIB system... pretty basic but it sounds decent and supports DD and DTS 5.1) is connected to the TV's toslink digital out so that anything going into the TV through HDMI will be sent to the receiver.

The problem is getting digital sound from the PC to the TV. The TV only seems to support digital sound input via HDMI. It has no optical or coaxial digital input (just an optical output to go to a receiver).

So far the only thing I can find is a DVI+toslink to HDMI converter box like this:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10114&cs_id=1011405&p_id=5369&seq=1&format=2

Is there a better or less expensive way to do this since the 8800GTX apparently can't send audio over HDMI?

[mullet]

Optical from the PC to the receiver?

[CaptNKILL]

Optical from the PC to the receiver?

It only has one optical input. :o

And it doesn't have HDMI so there wouldn't be any way to get the sound back to the TV to just use the TV speakers when the surround sound isn't needed (ie, when the baby is sleeping).