Probably at the end of the year or beginning 2005 TVTool will retire. Until then at least two things are still on the task list: The support for GeForce-FX cards with ext. TV-chip will be integrated. Also some problems which seem to occur when hyperthreading is enabled on Pentium IV systems will be solved if possible.

Why retire?

The decision to stop further development of TVTool was not easy. At the end of 1999 the first version was released, since that day the program was downloaded almost 1 million times only from this page. More than 8 million visitors from 150 countries were counted on this homepage. And registered users are found in exactly 107 countries of the world! The amount of work, especially for support was not easy. On some days more than 300 emails were received (without spam :-). Not all could be answered, but about 20.000 support emails have been sent.

The main reason for stopping the tool is that nVidia graphics cards are no attractive platform for TV outpt related applications anymore. For a long time external TV chips from manufacturers like Conexant or Chrontel were used. Terms like BT869, CH7003 or SAA7108 became familiar to many users for sure. Some of these chips were able to output a very high quality signal, especially the CX25871 is known for that. By providing more or less sufficient documentation the manufacturers made it possible that the support for these chips could be integrated in TVTool and that the features and capabilities could be maximized. A very high performance TV output could be created.

Since the introduction of the GeForce4-MX nVidia uses an integrated TV chip called 'MV' instead. This chip, which is probably quite inexpensive, can´t compete with the quality of a CX25871 for example. There were still some cards with ext. TV chips after the GF4-MX came out, but these disappeared from the market almost completely. On the GeForce-6 ext. TV chips are probably not used at all. But the limited picture quality of the MV chip is only one reason, something other adds to this.

If you have visited this homepage from time to time you might have read it before: nVidia doesn´t provide any datasheets nor any documentation at all for their chips. Every contact has been blocked constantly. Obviously the guys at nVidia were embarrassed that they couldn´t provide at least a very basic but acceptable TV out support in their drivers for years, while a small tool offered this functionality already for a long time. You must imagine that the drivers knew only two options quite a while: TV on or off! And this often in NTSC with black borders only. However, without datasheets it´s not possible to integrate support for the MV chip in TVTool. So we depend on the support by the driver for this chip. Unfortunately nVidia has proven that they don´t have the feeling for a proper TV out support. The current drivers are cutted up into so many parts that even experienced users lose the overall view.

This is a pity, because there were a chance to establish nVidia cards as the ultimate choice for TV out applications. But because of the problems described before it doesn´t make sense to further develop TVTool on this hardware platform.