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Turning an old PC into a Media Centrr - S-video issues

SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex SinterklasicusMadrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
edited March 2010 in Help / Advice Forum
For a bit, we've been working on a project:

We had an old PC, a P4 2.8mhz, 2gb ram, Ati Radeon 9600Pro. Now we wanted to turn it into a Media Center. We checked the card and the TV (A Philips Matchline, one of the old big widescreen CRT ones), and it had an S-video, as does the PC.

We reinstalled Windows XP (SP3), Installed the Ati Catalyst drivers and Media center. We plug in the S-video on both sides... and get a only a very partial picture of screen. Some portion of the upper half is showing, but the color is off and it's flickering. It's off on both resolution and refresh rate, by the looks of it. We tried just about every thinkable combination in the settings (Both windows and catalyst) and just can't get it to work.

What it does do is recognize the second monitor as a TV. But I'm not sure what's going wrong here, never done it before, and from basic searches it should just work without a hitch.

Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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    IconoclysmIconoclysm Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Make sure you're using the right cable. A straight through svideo cable probably wont work.

    The tv out socket on the back of the 9600 may look like s-video, but it may be a custom connector that needs a converter/drop cable to connect to anything. One should have come with the card, but stuff like that gets lost about 10mins after opening the box in my house.

    Should be able to pick up a replacement from ebay, but a new cheap vid card may be better value and will come with the needed adapter in box.

    Iconoclysm on
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    EskimoDaveEskimoDave Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    have you tried restarting the computer with the TV on? I had to do this every time I want to use my TV and computer together. It wouldn't work, or it would be all screwed up. When you set the TV as the default monitor it should adjust and everything should be okay.



    (it makes me sad that your 'old' PC is pretty much the same as my current pc)

    EskimoDave on
    The best, and worst, blog about beer in BC.
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    corky842corky842 Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    You're in the Netherlands. Is the s-video output set to 50Hz?

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    SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex Sinterklasicus Madrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
    edited March 2010
    We can't actually set the output to 50hz, though we can set the "mode" whatever it means to NL-PAL. I'll try booting with the TV on, not sure if I tried that.

    SanderJK on
    Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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    SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex Sinterklasicus Madrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
    edited March 2010
    No dice with the reboot. I checked the connections, the 9600pro has a 7 pin s-video connector, the TV has a 4pin, and the cable is a 4pin too. Some googling tells me that pin 5 does nothing, 6 is ground, 7 is composite. Signal should still be fine with 4pins?

    I messed with the frequency a bit, and if I set it to 60Hz the image does become close to stable frequency wise, but it's still very off color, and only shows a tiny bit of desktop area (I'd say around 400x240 from the center of the screen or so... it seems to small for 640x480).

    I think a friend has a TV-Out USB contraption, gonna see if that works when I can get a hold of him...

    SanderJK on
    Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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