laptop to tv mystery

[pawz]

Hi all. Got a cry for help from a friend last night, but in an area I am not too familiar with.

His wife wants to display their holiday photos ( stored on his laptop) on the television.

He went to Maplins and they said 'ah yes, you need a Scart lead'.

That worked fine, except that the TV is not showing colour.

He goes back to Maplins and they said, 'ah yes, you need a universal modulator'.

Didn't work - needed an aerial wire (?)

Went back to Maplins, bought a stringy thing, took it home tried to connect it to the universal modulater box.

Didn't fit

Went back to Maplins with dark thoughts brewing in his head and dumped the lot on the counter.

'Ah yes, we sold you the wrong one, all you need is a male to female adapter and everything will be fine!'

Still didn't work.

He phones Maplins, not trusting himself to get within arms reach of any necks.

'Ah' says Maplins. 'That does sometimes happen, it's yer drivers....download the latest.'

He does ( Nvidia), but it doesn't seem to have the desired effect, and Maplins have now lost interest and are not able to help, so he phones me up....

Drivers I can help with, but the hardware side I am hazy about. My graphics card has a TV-out lead - a mini-din with four pins. S-video - zat right?

I have never connected it. Is that all you need?

Would appreciate the benefit of your superior knowledge here so that we can help him before his wife sues for divorce, the poor man is desperate!

 

[jrbarnett]

The circular 4 pin connector is an S Video out port, there should be a connector supplied with the card to convert it to a TV aerial connector. Theory says you just put a TV aerial cable in there and plug it into the back of TV or video, but I have never got it to work at all.

In my case it was outputting camcorder video footage captured from a camcorder to record direct to a VHS recorder.
We got around it by outputting the edited footage back to camcorder via the firewire port and hooking that up to the scart lead of the video recorder, removing the PC from the equation completely.

In your case, some DVD players can view JPG images stored on DVD or CD-R, this may be a workaround in your case.

John

 

[noellees1]

With my graphics card an FX 5600 (Nvidia) their is a port that you just plug in the wire for the tvout (the mouse style looking one) into the same port on the TV (Sony Trinitron) and it just boots up as it usually would no problems incured.
Has he tried that route or has his TV not got that port, therefore the reason he is using a Scart?

 

[pawz]

we have come on a bit since I posted, though it is all on hold for the moment as he has an urgent job for a client to attend to. I think the driver(s) he downloaded were the wrong ones. He went to Nvidia and got the Geforce drivers - but for a desktop machine. His is an Inspiron 8000 Notebook. I think he needs the Geforce2Go drivers, and for the latest he will need to put in his service tag at Dell - Nvidia advises to go to the OEM as a degree of customization is involved.
If Dell can't help, I found that driver on their ftp site, but it is dated April 2002. So, until he downloads and installs the GO driver, we won't know how things stand. Hopefully all will be well. Have to wait and see

thanks for advice so far....

 

[CHiD]

Hi guys.

Dare I say this - I work for Maplins, but obviously not the branch that you are having trouble with.

I have seen this problem before. A chap brought in a laptop that was displaying only in colour, using his S-video lead. He hooked it all up to a screen in the store and it was colour straight away.

With S-video the colour is transmitted differently than through an RF lead (aerial connector, which in this case will obviously not work because it is a completely different type of signal).

In some instances the lack of colour in a picture is caused by a faulty connection - sometimes happens when a scart plug is not seated properly in the socket.

I always suggest trying the device with different leads and screens because by doing this you can eliminate faults with both. If it works okay on another telly, your telly is the problem but you know what I mean.

Whatever your friend has bought from Maplin though he should be able to get his money back. If the store won't sort him out, tell him to phone the customer service number on the back of the catalogue - that almost always results in a refund.

Hope he gets it sorted.

Chris.

 

[CHiD]

Another (late) thought.

Try changing the output format from Pal to NTSC. On my TV if I use PAL it shows only in black and white, whereas NTSC show in colour. It might be something this simple.

HTH

Chris.

 

[pawz]

thanks Chris, I will copy your advice and send to him.

ps we love Maplins really...

 

[skiflyer]

I was confused by which hardware I needed for a laptop TV out at one point... so I said, hey it's portable... took the computer itself to Circuit City and asked to borrow a TV, got all situated in a few seconds and was on my merry way.

Do do the software research first (some of those Toshiba NVidia arrangements are a little peculiar) so you don't look like a ninny though.