Re: TV adapter

This may not end up working as well as you hope. The adapter is a scan converter VGA to PAL/NTSC. There are a number of available units from Happague, STB, ATI Tech as well as others and many support PAL output. They range in price from $75 to $300 depending on what extras you want. The converted picture will be fine for graphics but is very poor for text. In fact, any font smaller than 15pt will be very fuzzy. There are very high end scan converters that will present reasonable text, but you are talking very big bucks. At that point, it would be cheaper to buy a TV display like the Phillips CDV8000 that can except VGA input.

I have done something similar to what you are attempting to create an a/v control system. I used a low end PC (133Mhz) that I assembled for apx. $250 with an ATI board (All-in-Wonder Pro) that cost apx. $200. I selected the ATI because it also had a built in TV tuner and video input. This allows me to set the "desktop" of windows to a video display (TV or VCR) and then excute control programs for the CD, VCR, TV and Receiver. In order to have an acceptable interface, I had to design screens with large fonts and relatively simple designs. Basically, more forms with less functionality on each. Something like CDJ will be illegible. With a little bit of experimentation you can create a slick looking interface that is not heavily dependent on text.