S-vid to vga adaptor

Wavey

Evening all.

I searched for this topic but I didnt find an answer


I have a GF4 ti4200 and i want to set up two monitors on it.

What kind of adaptor do I need? All the adaptors I've seen have a vga socket at one end but some kind of rectangular socket on the other. Whereas on my card I only have 1 vga socket(my primary monitor) and a circular 4 pin s-vid (dvi ???) socket.

Basically, what I need is a "roundy" s-vid to "rectangulary" vga adaptor !!

So exactly what do I need to install a monitor in this S-vid(dvi) socket.

Any Ideas?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

Inspector Gadget

Erm, simply put, you can't.

Cards that support multimonitor rigs will generally have two "monitor-type" outputs - by this, I mean either a total of two either D-SUB (VGA) outputs or DVI outputs; your card is a single-monitor device with a TV out (the S-Video socket).

S-Video is used for TV pictures, and the interface can't be used to drive another monitor, except (with a lot of help in the form of additional interface electronics) at TV resolutions (~720x576, at about 50Hz, in Europe, or ~720x480 at 60Hz in the US/Japan). Even if you did go to the trouble, it'll show exactly the same picture as your existing monitor.

You'll have to look for a card that supports "DualHead" (Matrox), "Hydravision" (ATi) or "nView" (nVidia) next time...

Sorry,
Gadget

Wavey

Thanx for reply inspector

I tried hooking up a tv to the s-vid out and i was able install it as an extra monitor using nview but it wasnt a very good picture.

So in theory do think it would be possible to use a monitor with an adaptor?

Any idea where i'de get one?

SouperComputer

even if you could, it woudl still look like crap!

TV's aren't excatly Hi-res!

Inspector Gadget

I'm afraid that I have no idea offhand... but to be honest it's not worth it. TV is a fixed-resolution, fixed-refresh medium - bear in mind that it's intended to be viewed at a minimum distance of about 6 feet as well - any closer than that, and the relatively low refresh rate (50Hz versus 75+Hz for most modern display setups) will quickly lead to headaches in most people; 72Hz is the EU recommendation for so-called "flicker free" viewing, IIRC. It's also locked to an effective resolution of about 720x576 - I say "effective" because there are actually 625 lines of analog colour data in Irish/UK TV (PAL standard) and TV "pixels" don't have the same aspect ratio as those used on monitors. Simply put, a TV makes a terrible monitor, to echo SouperComputer.

Also, from what I remember, any time I've seen such adaptors it's been for a price you could end up paying for a cheapish dual-monitor-capable graphics card (~150 USD) - as such, it's not worth it unless you absolutely need it somehow (such as recording video from a laptop with no TV out, maybe?).

Hope this helps,
Gadget

elexes

buy a new graphics card you are putting yourself in for a lot of low quality images if you dont and you still intend to do this