USB Tv-out Cable

werner said:
http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/svideo2cvideo.html

this circuit is what most of the ati radeon cards use ...they tend to output svideo, and come bundled with a little convertor cable.

so if you can find someone with a radeon like that, you can just nick the cable off them when they are not looking.

or just make one yourself, or get your local tv repairshop to make you one for a couple of rand...it is about as basic as what you can get, easy peasy to make
Click to expand...
Whats the difference between that one and the 7 pin one my laptop has?
 
teraside said:
As the title says, is there such a thing as a usb tv-out cable?

Any ideas on what I can do to provide tv-out for a laptop without it? It's a necessity that it should have tv-out.
Click to expand...
Just to answer the original question, I'm not aware of a USB to TV converter but you can get a VGA cable to TV converter.

One such device is the AVerMedia QuickPlay, it connects to your VGA output connector and can then output in composite, s-video and has pass-through so a VGA monitor can still be connected. One thing to note when looking at the diagram is that it features a USB cable, this is simply used to power the device.
 
yeah, I have a "Lindy VGA Converter Lite" here with me, which basically plugs into vga, then provides you with composite, svideo or rgb scart output. Cost around £80 at the time but oh so handy when you need a tool like this.
http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h135.htm

Bwana Vx:: not sure on your question, but basically the link explains it. A proper svideo port has 4 pins, 2 are ground, one luminance and one chrominance. The japanese/chinese/taiwanese like to use a 7 pin svideo connector. A normal 4 pin cable can plug into a 7 pin connector, and provide you with svideo no problem. The extra 3 holes are non-standard to a point, the manufacturer can provide extra dood-dahs that work off the other 3 pins, as they can set the pins to do whatever they want. NORMALLY, however, the other 3 pins are used to carry composite (requires 2 of the 3 pins) with the last pin just being an extra ground or so, but there is no real set "standard" for wiring a 7 pin svideo socket, except that the 4 svideo pins will be where they should be.

Quite a few laptops will have the 7 pin port, and may/may not be supplied with a little cable to plug into it to connect to the 3 extra pins to give composite output. But dont count on one cable working on another laptop, as I said above, they dont really listen to standard and just do what they want with the 3 extra pins.

here is the pinouts for radeons, (and probably quite a few laptop) 7 pin ports
http://pinouts.ru/Video/svideo_7pin_pinout.shtml
note how the 3 extra pins: only two do anything (carry composite and ground) with the third left unconnected.

nvidia gfx cards typically with a 4 pin svideo connector do output composite too...if only the "top" two pins are connected (luminance and chrominance) then the tv encoder chip detects this and outputs composite on those two pins instead.

So, to summarise: your laptop may have a 7pin to composite cable...this may or may not work with radeons and vice versa...but there is a chance it may.

Your nvidia card may come with an "svideo to composite" adapter, but it isnt...it only routes the Y and C from svideo --> composite signal+ground...the gfx card does the clever stuff via the tv encoder chip.

Lastly, getting composite from a standard svideo socket is pretty easy...all you need is a filter (the capacitor) which is what a 4pin radeon gfx card+adapter cable do...so these radeons dont output composite, they always output svideo, and the little cable does all the "hard" work.
 
thanks for the scientific explanation werner :)

nice to see all of this put together, I knew most of it, but filled up the gaps here and there
 
ok, i have s-video out on my crappy notebook.
If I plug into the TV, I can see the windows desktop etc, at 800*600 and 1024*768.

If I open a video file (say Lost Season 1.avi), the video feed is just black. I can see the video player, and the desktop of windows, but the part of the screen where the video should be is black. It is fine on the notebook (dual view), so the notebook has the correct codecs etc.

How to fix?
 
not can be fixed ekse.

windows has this silly limitation...only one surface can be primary at a time, and only the primary surface can display video. if you make your tv the primary surface, then the picture will show on tv and laptop lcd will be black.

@bekdik: svideo to scart adapters are all well and fine, but you will find some tv's dont accept svideo input via the scart socket (it wasnt part of the original scart standard, only rgb and composite was)...if youcome acrosss a tv like that, voila...you get a black and white picture (because one luminance pin on svideo-->scart adapter was actually hijacked from the original scart spec from the composite signal pin) so you get a picture, but no chrominance (no COLOUR) :-)
you can also get black and white picture from other reasons, but this one is pretty common..
 
Got S-Video ->RCA Cable I got at Pick n Pay.
It works, its colour and its cheap! (It's also blue and quiet long)
it's about R55
Should be what you want. Go to a PnP and see if they have one.
:)
 
Was facing a similar dilemma ... new notebook does not have TV out for watching vids (no gaming) on TV/Amp. Couldn't find cheap & locally avaliable USB or other converter/cable so my solution was to turn the problem on its head.

Bought new LG DVX173 DVD player (R599 at most stores) and so far its played every Divx/Xvid format I've thrown at it (no WMV support tho). Just got a few DVD+RW disks to which I select & burn the files I want to watch, then once watched, I just erase and reburn a new set.

This way dont even have to boot notebook to watch, but obviously requires it to have a DVD+RW burner.
 
I have a video card that has an s-video output. My 7900 GT came with a convert from S-video to (i think it is) RCA. There are 4 coloured cables (red, blue, green, yellow).

How am I supposed to plug these into my tv? I tried them all, but the green one is the only one that shows a picture, albeit black and white.

Is there a way that I can use this cable to get colour on my (older) tv? Can I buy an additional convertor that could take the 4 cable feed and convert it to a single feed for my AV input, or perhaps a RF input?
 
scatlett said:
I have a video card that has an s-video output. My 7900 GT came with a convert from S-video to (i think it is) RCA. There are 4 coloured cables (red, blue, green, yellow).

How am I supposed to plug these into my tv? I tried them all, but the green one is the only one that shows a picture, albeit black and white.
Click to expand...
The red, blue and green cables are for "Component video" while the yellow is for "Composite video". Component video provides a higher quality but is not supported by all TV's.

You should be able to get things working by plugging in the yellow cable (Composite video) into your TV. If this doesn't give you a picture on the TV, go into your graphics card settings and make sure that the output format is set to composite video and PAL-I.
 
werner said:
not can be fixed ekse.

windows has this silly limitation...only one surface can be primary at a time, and only the primary surface can display video. if you make your tv the primary surface, then the picture will show on tv and laptop lcd will be black.

@bekdik: svideo to scart adapters are all well and fine, but you will find some tv's dont accept svideo input via the scart socket (it wasnt part of the original scart standard, only rgb and composite was)...if youcome acrosss a tv like that, voila...you get a black and white picture (because one luminance pin on svideo-->scart adapter was actually hijacked from the original scart spec from the composite signal pin) so you get a picture, but no chrominance (no COLOUR) :-)
you can also get black and white picture from other reasons, but this one is pretty common..
Click to expand...

not true. i have seen latops display on the laptop screen and through the tv-out.
same with pc's with tv out cards.
 
A bit of caution advised on the PC2TV converters, most give really bad picture and the ones that do work(not 100%) are really expensive.

Rather go look for a LT with s-video out. A good second hand centrino with all you need should not set you back more than R3500.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X