So we are moving to a new country, and will be living in a smaller house then we do now (rent in London is a bitch). One consequence is that I’m loosing my small “office” room where my gaming PC stayed. I actually don’t mind that much, I find I have less and less will to sit alone in my room and prefer to play with my children.
So I hooked the PC to the TV and here comes the first question. I’m using a 560TI which doesn’t have an HDMI exit, so I’m using the TV’s VGA socket. is there a way to transform into HDMI together with the sound output. OTOH, I understand that HDMI is slower then VGA so possible I shouldn’t bother?
Second question, I am using a thrustmaster gamepad which works OK with most games with some fiddling, but its wired. I’m thinking of getting a couple of wireless PC Xbox controllers, but I remember reading they have problems. Is this still correct. If it is what other wireless alternatives should I consider.
Lastly, I still planned on using the PC for email, browsing and file loading. The problem is that all these applications (outlook, web browsers, windows explorer) don’t work so well with a TV. The font is just too small. Are there any TV optimised applications for these things.
Any other suggestions to make this work better are welcome :)
The flaw I’ve heard about with wireless 360 pads is that their driver doesn’t interpret the analog triggers correctly as 2 separate “dials”. If people can refute this, I’ll totally get the PC 360 receiver.
The flaw I’ve heard about with wireless 360 pads is that their driver doesn’t interpret the analog triggers correctly as 2 separate “dials”. If people can refute this, I’ll totally get the PC 360 receiver.
Looking around the internet, this seems to still be the case, but I can’t say it’s ever been an issue for me. There aren’t any games I play on PC with a controller that require simultaneous, separate trigger recognition.
There are appearance settings that will make the font bigger in Windows Explorer. It can do some weird font clipping sometime, but should make it usable from a distance.
Ctrl and the plus and minus keys will make web pages bigger.
Not sure there are any options for Outlook. I use web email on my HTPC and it is readable since its in a zoomed-in browser.
Same problems with space when we first moved to London, too. I did the alternative thing, used my 24" moniter as a TV. Seeing as you can stream BBC iplayer, ITV, channel 4, Lovefilm, netflix etc through your PC, we didn’t really need the TV much, (unless you’re hooked to a quantity of channels Freeview provides.)
We’ve since moved to a larger flat and now also have a tv, so we plug the laptops in for streaming movie files once in a while, using VGA and audio-in cables. Font is small but legible, but my native laptop is 1200X768 res (that I’m duplicating on the telly), so maybe you need to bring yours down.
I’ve been using HDTVs as my primary PC monitors for seven years now and have a wireless 360 dongle as well.
How are you even connecting your PC to your TV through VGA? A DVI->VGA adaptor? Assuming you’re talking about a GTX560ti your best bet is to the an appropriate cable and use the mini-HDMI port. Second to that you could get a DVI->HDMI cable. Try getting things set up this way with an all-digital connection before making a judgement on how readable the screen is.
What kind of HDTV are you using? (Size and resolution)
If you output over mini-HDMI it will carry the sound as well. There should be a setting in the nvidia control panel to enable that. If you output over DVI->HDMI you’d have to connect the sound separately.
No problems here with the 360 adaptor. It should do what you want to do. Note however that most of the adaptors sold anymore are cheap Chinese knockoffs. I bought mine back when they first came out and it’s a genuine Microsoft product, so your mileage may vary.
More data points:
I have a Razer Onza wired pad which reports the two triggers as X-Y axis to another joystick in gamepad properties.
I also have a Cyborg Rumble Pad v3 which reports one trigger as the down half of a throttle axis, and the other trigger as the up half. Pulling them both sets the value back to the middle. Also, the two triggers register as 2 digital buttons if they move just a little bit. I suppose this is what’s happening with the 360, too.
I haven’t played any driving game on the PC, so I don’t know if the rumble pad will give me problems.
I also have a Cyborg Rumble Pad v3 which reports one trigger as the down half of a throttle axis, and the other trigger as the up half. Pulling them both sets the value back to the middle.
From my (post-OP) research, that’s basically what the 360 wireless receiver driver does (did?). It registers the left trigger as 0 to +1 on axis 3 and the right as 0 to -1, summing the two inputs. Apparently the controller is also sending them as two separate axes, but for whatever reason the driver isn’t (wasn’t?) built to accept this or be able to map it.
But what is your concern? Almost every game with controller support explicitly expects and supports the 360 controller, no matter what the literal driver mapping is.
This isn’t true anymore. On Nvidia cards, it has been possible to route sound through the DVI connection since the 8800GT. I think the same is true of ATI cards, these days, but I have no experience with that.
