Using TV to view films on PowerBook

luckat

I've been trying to use the TV (an aged Panasonic) to view films - downloaded Korean soaps, copied DVDs - which are stored on the hard drive of my PowerBook. I got a Yakuma DVD player, which came with an S-Video cable, and tried connecting through that, but without success.

I now have the TV showing the *desktop*. This is using the S-Video to an S-Video-to-SCART adapter plugged into the TV. But it's not showing the film on the TV screen.

Another source tells me that his iBook sets the screen resolution automatically to "TV" in his display preferences when he plugs it into a TV. My System Prefs don't offer "TV". He also said to look for Dual Monitors in the System Prefs; I can't find any such preference. (He said that when he does this, if he opens DVD Player, its screen on the computer screen is blank, but the film plays on fullscreen on the TV.)

While the TV shows my desktop, it doesn't show what's *on* the desktop; that is to say, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't - usually it shows just the desktop, with the apple menu at top, but it doesn't show the Macintosh HD icon, or any windows I have open, including those of programs I might be running (such as DVD Player).

Any thoughts, anyone? All help gratefully accepted.

ScabbyLeg

I think the solution is to fit the F7 key on the Powerbook to toggle between the two display modes.

luckat

Got it mirroring the screens. But the TV only shows the films in black-and-white, and the sound comes from the PowerBook.

Dizz

It's black and white for to probably reasons - one you are looking at the video output on the wrong AV channel (my TV has 2 AV's and a S-Video) so try changing the TV channel. Two you are outputting a NTSC signal to a PAL device (Most TV's in europe are of one PAL standard or another) so open your display settings and select PAL rather than NTSC.

Dizz

luckat

Thanks, Dizz, I'll try those things.

case_sensitive

Nope, that's called Macrovision protection..
I had it on my Dell i8100 too, it's protection against you connecting your DVD player to a VCR and pirating the analog output. DVD players have to be able to detect if they're connected to the TV directly, they scan they're output and see TV, great, if not, you get Grain-O-Vision. Computers also have this provision. The trick is to persaude them that you're connected to a TV.
It's a bit of a messy situation, one that despite all my hunting on support.dell.com (it's a very common complaint), I never fixed. That said, maybe you'll have better luck with the apple forums...

acous

He said he has it connected to a tv. Macrovision from my experience just causes a slight change in brightness on the tv (i'm sure there's some fancy voltage changes or something going on the background) that makes it difficult to record to tape. You might be right, i dunno. I would be very interested in learning how the computer "scans" for a tv... i thought s-video was a relatively simple analogue video cable.

uberwolf

slightly off topic, and a bit naive, but I'm taking delivery off my powerbook 12" in the next couple of days. What adapter do I need to be able to use a standard monitor? and TV? cheers.

acous

the adapter for a regular screen will come with the laptop, the adapter for tv is something you have to buy from apple afaik.

uberwolf

kool, thanks