S-Video 7pin to 4pin

velocirafter · 19-10-2008 10:58PM #1

So i have a packard bell laptop with an 7 pin s-video connection, i would like to run the signal into our tv to watch movies.The S-video connection on the tv is a 4-pin s-video connection.

Would a 4-pin cable give me a colour picture on the tv? if i bought a scart to 7pin s-video connection would that work with a 7-pin cable? i heard that alot of these s-video connections are proprietary.

Thanks

Myxomatosis · 19-10-2008 11:07PM

You should just be able to plug your standard 4 pin S-Video cable into the 7 pin port on your laptop.

Your TV has an S-Video port so yeah you will get colour.

A lot of problems with S-Video not having colour is were you have an S-Video to SCART adapter. A good few TVs don't support an S-Video signal but your TV seems to have a dedicated S-Video port so it will be fine.

velocirafter · 20-10-2008 03:00PM

i bought a 4-pin cable today in maplin so i'll try it out tonight and get back to you

velocirafter · 21-10-2008 03:02PM

at the moment i'm getting no signal from my packard bell laptop running ubuntu.

i tried a different dell laptop running vista and it kind of worked, there was some colour but the screen was all messed up, to be honest i think that was a vista issue and it doesnt really matter because it isnt my laptop i was just checking that the port on the tv worked at all.

I think the reason im not getting a signal from my laptop is something to do with ubuntu settings. i was messing with the settings trying to get it to work and now im only getting a command line on my laptop monitor so i have to try and sort this before i can return to the s-vid problem.

if anyone has any experience getting s-vid connections transmitting in ubuntu (or how i can get my GUIs back) i would love to hear your suggestions

Myxomatosis · 21-10-2008 03:53PM

Hum, getting TV out working correctly on Windows is sometimes an achievment, never mind Linux.

You'll probably have to edit xorg.conf if ubuntu does not have any display manager GUI.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=9106

But as you say your stuck on command line. Does it just boot up into a command line login screen? Or does it attempt to start X but crashes?

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ubuntu-linux-how-to-reconfigure-x-windows-system-xorg-server/

velocirafter · 28-10-2008 02:03PM

I was messing around with the xorg.conf and i was able to get a pretty good picture on the tv screen now. The only problem is that it is jumping in and out of colour and the picure is twitching on the screen aswell.

Does this sound like some sort of PAL/NTSC problem or refresh rate etc...

Myxomatosis · 28-10-2008 03:30PM

Do you have an installation of Windows anywhere just to make sure that the S-Video connection is working through that with full colour etc?

Nvida or ATI control panels will do all of the work for you on Windows.

The problem could be a number of things on Linux, do you have an ATI or Nvidia graphics card? Open source or proprietary graphics drivers? Any parameter slightly off or even misspelled in xorg.conf could cause problems.

Try download the ATI or Nvida control panel for Linux, might make this easier. Backup your xorg.conf because it's the one thing that always seems to **** up for me when I'm trying to do anything remotely non standard in terms of video in Linux.

velocirafter · 28-10-2008 09:08PM

Ok i got it working pretty much perfectly now. So just in case anyone is wondering how i did it, it was all extra lines of code in the xorg.conf

The red lines of code are the things i inserted. There may be some redundancy in the things i added and if i get a chance i might mess around with it and see exactly what lines are needed and what isnt

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
	Driver		"intel"
[COLOR="Red"]	Option 		"MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
	Option		"Clone" "true"
	Option		"DevicePresence" "true"
	Option 		"monitor-TV" "TV"[/COLOR]
	BusID		"PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

[COLOR="Red"]
Section "Monitor"
	Identifier "TV"
	Option "Ignore" "false"
	Option "TV_FORMAT" "PAL"
EndSection[/COLOR]

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Generic Monitor"
	Option		"DPMS"
	HorizSync	28-50
	VertRefresh	43-75
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Device		"Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
	Monitor		"Generic Monitor"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection "Display"
		Modes	"1280x800"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier	"Default Layout"
	Screen		"Default Screen"
	InputDevice	"Generic Keyboard"
	InputDevice	"Configured Mouse"

# Uncomment if you have a wacom tablet
#	InputDevice     "stylus"	"SendCoreEvents"
#	InputDevice     "cursor"	"SendCoreEvents"
#	InputDevice     "eraser"	"SendCoreEvents"
	InputDevice	"Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

S-Video 7pin to 4pin

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