Help/Advice needed on TV Out (or In?)

[GiganticDays]

I'm thinking of setting up a "lifestyle" PC in my living room. You know the type; smart slimline case, hooked up to TV etc. to replace hi-fi, video recorder & DVD Player.
I intend to install a Graphics card with TV Out with a view to using the TV as a monitor but in the past whenever I've tried this the picture on the TV is really poor quality except when viewing movies. Text is blurred and unreadable. Now I've only tried this with an older TV so far and the one I want to use is quite new, although not 100Hz nor HD.
Question is; am I wasting my time or is there a way to make the picture clear?
The spec of the PC will be something like this:-

P4 2.0GHz
ASRock P4VX4 Motherboard
512Mb PC333
80Gb HDD
NEC ND1100A DVD+RW
GeForce4 MX440 128Mb Graphics Card with TV Out
PCI TV Tuner Card (is this necessary to provide a PVR function or is there a way to input the signal from the TV to the PC - kind of TV-In?)
Any and all advise gratefully received.

[Peter M]

See my answer over at SysOpt. TV image quality IS poor, that's in the nature of the signal as well as the tubes used in TV sets.