Hopefully not a stupid question

[ffutures]

Yet another computer graphics question, but totally unrelated to the others I've asked recently.

The computer I use as a media PC has VGA out only. My TV has VGA and HDMI inputs, but for some reason doesn't support wide screen VGA - the screen is actually 1366 x 768, but the best graphic mode it supports through this port is 1024 x 768 standard aspect, not widescreen. For TV programs etc. I can work around this by stretching the picture to fill the screen and setting VLC media player to a pixel aspect of 4:3, but most other programs have no way to compensate.

I'd been vaguely thinking about a VGA to HDMI adapter box, but that's seriously expensive. However, I just discovered that DVI to HDMI appears to be a lot easier to implement - just an adapter that costs around £2 and an appropriate cable. And you can get a basic 128mb DVI card with PC Express interface around a tenner.

Has anyone got any experience with this, and is there any down-side I should be aware of?

(Apart from needing an HDMI switch since I will then have two HDMI outputs and one socket on the TV...)

Comments

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's full height (pretty massive) and has a fan. However it occurred to me that the card that it replaced was also PCI Express and is still around; I've just dug it out and it's half height AND HAS AN HDMI OUTPUT! A GeForce 8500 GT, 512 Mb, and never ever used - I had it replaced by the faster 8800 GTS in the shop when I bought the computer but they gave it to me anyway. It does have a fan, though, and as it is unused I have no idea how quiet it is. The 8800 GTS was actually extremely quiet despite its huge fan. You could have the 8500 for the cost of the postage - it's no use to me.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The one I was looking at apparently isn't suitable. How much do you think postage would be? Even if that one turns out to be a bit too noisy, it would let me try the idea out.