monitor out to s-video or RCA?

[zimu]

is there some converter than converts the monitor out of my laptop into s-video or RCA so i can see it on tv?

i tried a number of searches on ebay and google without any luck, please help!

 

[aircooled]

There are some devices that will do it (scan converters), but for the money, buying a new video card with TV out is a better option and offers higher quality than a scan converter.

 

[zimu]

Originally posted by: aircooled
There are some devices that will do it (scan converters), but for the money, buying a new video card with TV out is a better option and offers higher quality than a scan converter.

actually never mind;
i just bought a "vga to s-video" adapter with RCA as well for $8 shipped.
cheaper than a new video card i'd think.

plus, i have a notebook...

 

[gogeeta13]

Originally posted by: zimu

Originally posted by: aircooled
There are some devices that will do it (scan converters), but for the money, buying a new video card with TV out is a better option and offers higher quality than a scan converter.

actually never mind;
i just bought a "vga to s-video" adapter with RCA as well for $8 shipped.
cheaper than a new video card i'd think.

plus, i have a notebook...

from where? link? feel free to PM

 

[zimu]

Originally posted by: gogeeta13

Originally posted by: zimu

Originally posted by: aircooled
There are some devices that will do it (scan converters), but for the money, buying a new video card with TV out is a better option and offers higher quality than a scan converter.

actually never mind;
i just bought a "vga to s-video" adapter with RCA as well for $8 shipped.
cheaper than a new video card i'd think.

plus, i have a notebook...

from where? link? feel free to PM

CLICK

 

[isekii]

wow that's sweet 🙂

 

[Reliant]

A guy I knew had one of those, it did the job.

 

[aircooled]

Let us know if it works.

 

[supesman]

do you need to have like the latest laptop for this to work? my bro has a celeron 500, i think it's a hp w/ win2k, will it work with that?

 

[TheToOTaLL]

Wow, nice!

Picked one up as well; should work good on either my laptop or desktop!

 

[glugglug]

Good luck reading anything on the screen with it.

Seriously, anything other than powerpoint slides is going to be a bitch.

 

[aircooled]

Please, check your PC & Video Card manual or manufacturer to make sure that your VGA card has TV-Out function capability to ensure this cable will work for you!

Sounds like it will only work if your card/laptop supports TV out (in which case it should already have an RCA/S-video connector).

 

[glugglug]

Just looked at the above link. FYI folks, from what I can tell those cables pictured just combine signals from your VGA out to those for SVHS/NTSC, without fixing the timings to be what your TV expects. For this to work you must first bring your monitor down to normal TV timings, which your video card & monitor may or may not let you. Chances are if it does without some other tools like powerstrip, it probably has a TV out anyways.

 

[zimu]

i should have it in a couple of days; will post with what my findings are 🙂

 

[AMCRambler]

What kind of laptop do you have? My girlfriends got an old Thinkpad 390X it's got an S video out and my T21 has one also.

 

[Indolent]

I use an s-video to rca from my laptop to tv. I just use it to watch movies and it works great.

 

[zimu]

got the cable; can't seem to get it to work. the t.v. just shows lines moving across the screen. i have an inspiron 1100 which supports tv-out, has an s-video output although i didn't wanna use that.

have changed color depth, resolution, as well as refresh rate, but no luck. any suggestions?

 

[glugglug]

Crappy as it is you are better off using the s-video out because it always has the timings that the TV wants.
If you want to send the VGA port to the TV you will first need to get the VGA port to use NTSC timings with Powerstrip or similar utility.

For a normal TV this is 640x480, horizontal frequency 16kHz, vertical 30/60Hz (or pick the predefined "640x480i (Arcade)" custom resolution in powerstrip). Note that this is really 30 Hz because of interlacing, not the 60Hz Windows defaults to. Note that if you are using the RCA (possibly s-video also but not a sure thing) connector while your computer may think this is 640x480, the effective resolution because of interference between the color and brightness parts of the signal will be closer to 150x480.

If your TV is HDTV capable try the "1920x1080i (HDTV derived)" setting in powerstrip which is 34KHz horizontal sync, 30/60Hz vertical sync.

Anything that takes an NTSC signal through an RCA jack will always be too crappy to read normal size text. There is a reason the acronym is more commonly assumed to mean "Never Twice the Same Color".

 

[AkumaX]

guys, i've bought a cable similar, you cant just buy a cable that "fits" the end of the video card and expect it to output svideo/composite. it needs to be de/re-interlaced (or something...) and the cables youre buying are for video cards that support tv-out functions through vga natively (the video card should already include one of these cables anyway)

but this is the REAL vga->svideo/composite (requires an external powersource, too)

example

 

[zimu]

Originally posted by: glugglug
Crappy as it is you are better off using the s-video out because it always has the timings that the TV wants.
If you want to send the VGA port to the TV you will first need to get the VGA port to use NTSC timings with Powerstrip or similar utility.

For a normal TV this is 640x480, horizontal frequency 16kHz, vertical 30/60Hz (or pick the predefined "640x480i (Arcade)" custom resolution in powerstrip). Note that this is really 30 Hz because of interlacing, not the 60Hz Windows defaults to. Note that if you are using the RCA (possibly s-video also but not a sure thing) connector while your computer may think this is 640x480, the effective resolution because of interference between the color and brightness parts of the signal will be closer to 150x480.

If your TV is HDTV capable try the "1920x1080i (HDTV derived)" setting in powerstrip which is 34KHz horizontal sync, 30/60Hz vertical sync.

Anything that takes an NTSC signal through an RCA jack will always be too crappy to read normal size text. There is a reason the acronym is more commonly assumed to mean "Never Twice the Same Color".

i tried using the powerstrip program, but it doesn't even allow for a horizontal sync of 34KHz! it doesn't go that low! i've tried a number of changes to the settings, but every time i get the same thing on the t.v., and it doens't even look like its having ANY effect whatsoever. i mean you should notice something if you change horizontal resolution from like 50Hz to 200Hz!!