ANSWERS: 8
  • From my personal experience with an old Dell Latitude laptop: What looks like an s-video socket on some laptops is actually a custom connector meant for a special adapter sold by the laptop manufacturer. On my Dell the adapter would plug into the laptop and then offer regular composite output and s-video output. Directly using an s-video cable wouldn't work at all even thought it did fit. Your best bet is to make sure that that's really an s-video output and not a custom video output. You should be able to check the manual or contact the laptop's manufacturer and ask them about it. If an adapter is needed, they should be able to sell you one. If the output is really an s-video output, then try using a different cable, a different tv, or a different s-video source (maybe a dvd player). This will let you know if any one of your components are defective. Failing all of that, you may need to contact the laptop's manufacturer for more support. Good luck!
  • If you are getting a black and white (grayscale) image then only part of the s-video is working. S-video has 4 wires or pins and one pin if for the grayscale image you see. Actually some people use this for some images that they want to convert to grayscale. Getting better results than software (photoshop, etc) based removal of color.
  • Hi, Go into 'Intel(R) Extreme Graphics 2 M' or something similar under the control panel > display settings > television > then change the video standard to the one that looks good. Mine is set to NTSC_M. Hope that helps.
  • MyScenario: - same exact issue on 3 different Nvidia videocards: Hercules 64MB, MSI 128 MB & BFG 256 MB in two diferent PCs - all were doing the same thing : outputting Black and frikkin' White display to TV - Had Nvidia display options set to clone to TV with TV as primary output for the PC DVD drive (settings that I tried for TV output type made no difference at all) Hardware used contributing to problem: 1 S-VIDEO to RCA jack adapter dongle(came with MSI vid card) + One 12ft (3.6M) RCA cable (dual male connector) + 1 Akai midrange TV with Composite input This one is tricky because when I rolled back my Nvidia card drivers 2 versions on the old PC with the 128 MSI card the color on TV came up fine ??(but not great) I just built a new PC with 7800GT 256MB card in it and got same issue so man, was I was not impressed! It gets color output up to XP Pro screen then....... just useless B&W output again after the nvidia drivers kick in When I uninstalled the video drivers then color came back up all the way on TV after reboot but no S-Video options were installed to allow DVD to TV output = < Grrrrrrrrrrrr..... Three different major PC stores staff and many hours surfing the internet were informative but useless (no, I do NOT want to start soldering wires on my connectors thanks) THE FIX! : I played a good hunch and went to The Source/Circuit City which seems to be the only place I could find a direct S-VIDEO to Composite connector cable 12ft (3.6M) BRAND NAME :Evolution II Platinum S-Video to Composite shielded cable (approx $30 US ) I went home and unplugged the S-Video to RCA jack adapter dongle and the crappy RCA cable ($5 -thus my nickname) I then plugged the S-Video connector direct to the 7800GT card connector and RCA jack straight into the TV composite plug Result: OMFG!!! BEA-UTI-FUL crisp quality DVD picture on TV instantly with no settings adjustments and no worries Conclusion: It was 99% cheap crappy noisy cable + adapter dongle(?) and 1% Nvidia settings Possible cause : pushing S-Video bandwidth through a cheap 12ft RCA cable to a Composite connector is like shoving a watermelon through a garden hose - it just wasn't meant to happen If anyone reads this and has run out of ideas like me, try it and if it doesn't work (most cases it will) then just go back to store for a refund or exchange on the cost of the high end cable - no risk - Good Luck and Good Movies everyone
  • After searching the internet for hours I got pissed of and cut my s-video cable in two. I found to get colour, rewire the cable. Use a 4pin svideo plug (even if the computer has a 7pin). There seems to be no standard. It seems to work with pins 1,3 & 4 connected without pin 3 (trial and error). See wikipedia for what the pins are for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Video
  • I have the same problems but i am using an ati x300 dell laptop and i output a black and white signal and cant get it in colour this is driving me mad tv is new pc is new and cable is new and settings seam okay
  • err somthin screwed up with my comp and i wanted to see if i can load it up onto my laptop or my tv to see if its the cable/monitors problem how do i get the picture to come up? please email me at piratesownninjaz@gmail.com
  • Hi, I connected my laptop to my TV with a 4-pin S Video cable and was only getting black and white. However, I have managed to get colour, by pressing menu on my TV remote and changing the AV input to 'S Video'. It worked for me, hope this helps! non-existent

Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC

Answerbag | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy