I just installed an ATI HD2600XT Video Card with 512M of GDDR3 Video Ram and hooked it up to a 1680 x 1050 KDS widescreen LCD monitor with HDMI cabling. Nice card for what it is but when I started up my Sims 2 Nightlife and got the video adjusted to my new card and new monitor (1440 x 900 with square pixels) everything appeared to be working beautifully except for the fact that I can't see what the sims are watching on their TV sets. I hear the sound but the screen of the TV is black. Prior to installing the new video card the game was working beautifully. I could see what the Sims were watching on their TV's. Oh, and the Widescreen LCD was installed on the previous Video card (an ATI Radeon 9600) and there were no difficulties with that setup.

Computer specs:

MOBO: ASRock 939 Dual SATA
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Toledo Dual Core.
RAM: GSkill 2x1Gig RAM Sticks DDR 400
Display KDS 22" 16x9 Widescreen 1680x1050 LCD.

Video Card: ATI HD2600XT PCIe X16 512MB GDDR3 RAM
Driver Version: ati2mtag 6.14.10.6734 /XP (Latest)
ATI Catalyst Control Center 7.11 (Latest)

Currently all driver settings are default.

Thank you for the tip Whiterider. I went back into the video options and changed all of the settings singly and in combination (They had all been set to max) and nothing made any difference in the sim TV not showing any video. To further clarify what I am seeing:

Mirrors reflect. Sim TV is grey screen when turned off. Sim TV is (I know this will sound funny but people will know what I mean) "bright" black and lights up the surrounding items when turned on. The station sound is fine but there is absolutely no video being displayed on the TV screen as there was before I upgraded the video card.

Last edited by Tholian : 3rd Dec 2007 at 1:03 PM.

Have you checked around your graphics settings ingame? It's possible this is similar to mirrors not reflecting, and finding and pushing the right button will fix it.

As noted in my edits to my original post none of the video settings have affected this problem. I have also clarified what I am seeing in my edit.

Thanks for the tips Whiterider but this did not solve the problem.

Does the problem persist with your downloads removed? There are a number of threads with this very issue, but I'll be damned if I can find them when I need them. I vaguely recall it being related to custom content. Hopefully someone who remembers or knows the threads I speak of will come along. In the interim I'll keep looking.

JLonier I have installed no "custom" content for a while and the only thing different is the installation of the new video card as stated. I will remove my "custom" content and see if the problem persists and update this reply accordingly.

Update. Removed all "custom" content setting everything back to "pristine" and the problem persists. The Sim's TV shows only a "lighted" black screen when turned on though there is audio.

I also looked into it being a "shader" problem vis-a-vis the "invisible" fish. But no such luck. The fish are very visible without changing any settings.

Last edited by Tholian : 3rd Dec 2007 at 11:13 PM.

I am not too familiar with the ATI video cards, but I do know occassionally that nVidia comes out with a crappy driver that breaks one or more games. Perhaps you could try to find a version or two older driver to see if that may fix the problem.

Thanks, Crimsondrac. That solution is no solution at all as the older drivers are too broken in other ways as to make severe problems if I tried to go back to them. I'll message ATI to see if they have a response (unlikely) about this problem.

Meanwhile, since I don't have any special videos or stations on Sim TV I guess that if they think they can see the picture it will have to do for now.