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DVD-playing software - outputting to S-Video

RohanRohan Registered User regular
edited April 2007 in Games and Technology
I have a 21" CRT television in my room, closer to my bed than my 17" CRT monitor is, and I've been using the S-Video port on my Radeon X800 GTO to watch all my films I have recently backed up onto a new external drive. Seeing as I recently bought a new set of 5.1 speakers, I thought I'd be rid of the need for the DVD player that's hooked up to the television, and I can enjoy both my backed-up films and DVD's in general. The only problem is, no program seems capable of outputting the video signal to the television properly. To get it to display my backed-up films, I have to turn the performance in Media Player 10 down to half. Any higher, I get no picture. Any lower, I can't run fullscreen.

I have other programs on my pc such as Media Player Classic, MPlayer and PowerDVD, but none of these will display a DVD video signal to the television, either. Everything else is perfect - a wireless network allows me to control everything on the desktop through my laptop and Access Remote PC, a shareware program. It's great... but I just can't get the desktop to display video from a DVD disc onto the television through the S-Video connection.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Rohan on

Posts

  • Recoil42Recoil42 Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    *knee-jerk www.videolan.org suggestion post before parsing the OP fully*

    Recoil42 on
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  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    Recoil42 wrote: »
    *knee-jerk www.videolan.org reaction post before reading the OP fully*

    I've always avoided VideoLAN as Media Player Classic has always done what I wanted it to, and VideoLAN just looks complicated next to MPC's simple interface. But I'll give it a try, forgot about that one.

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
  • Recoil42Recoil42 Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    Rohan wrote: »
    Recoil42 wrote: »
    *knee-jerk www.videolan.org reaction post before reading the OP fully*

    I've always avoided VideoLAN as Media Player Classic has always done what I wanted it to, and VideoLAN just looks complicated next to MPC's simple interface. But I'll give it a try, forgot about that one.

    I prefer MPC's interface as well, but the internals of videolan are definitely much more "sophisticated" and better built than MPC.

    Recoil42 on
    marioyoshi.jpg
    I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
  • japanjapan Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    I had trouble with this a while ago. The problem turned out to be that the DVD playing software wouldn't display on the secondary screen.

    My solution was to set XP to use the S-Video as the primary screen, which was fiddly, but it worked.

    japan on
  • Recoil42Recoil42 Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    Ok, so wait, where does the Remote PC application come into use here? Are you just using it with the laptop TV remote style, or are you trying to stream video through it? Because VNC apps are not meant to stream video...

    Recoil42 on
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    I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    Nono, I'm just using it to control the desktop from the other side of the room, to pause a film or turn down the volume. I keep the settings as low as possible and minimise it every time I'm not using it, which seems to increase performance when watching any of the films on my hard drive.

    And no luck with VideoLAN just yet, it's giving the same result as the other programs - everything around the video window is fine, but the window itself has nothing. When I switch to full-screen, I get 21" of nothing on the tv.
    Japan wrote:
    I had trouble with this a while ago. The problem turned out to be that the DVD playing software wouldn't display on the secondary screen.

    My solution was to set XP to use the S-Video as the primary screen, which was fiddly, but it worked.

    I don't know how to do this... I'm using the Omega driver package and handling the tv from there. It's running in 1024*768 at 60Hz (funny, I thought SDTV's maxed out at 640*480). There doesn't seem to be any option to use the tv as the primary display.

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
  • Marty81Marty81 Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    Rohan wrote: »
    I don't know how to do this... I'm using the Omega driver package and handling the tv from there. It's running in 1024*768 at 60Hz (funny, I thought SDTV's maxed out at 640*480). There doesn't seem to be any option to use the tv as the primary display.

    Do it from inside XP. On the desktop, click properties, then go to settings, and you should see two monitors there. Click on the one that represents your TV, and check both boxes "Extend my desktop onto this monitor," and "Use this device as my primary monitor."

    Marty81 on
  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    Marty81 wrote: »
    Rohan wrote: »
    I don't know how to do this... I'm using the Omega driver package and handling the tv from there. It's running in 1024*768 at 60Hz (funny, I thought SDTV's maxed out at 640*480). There doesn't seem to be any option to use the tv as the primary display.

    Do it from inside XP. On the desktop, click properties, then go to settings, and you should see two monitors there. Click on the one that represents your TV, and check both boxes "Extend my desktop onto this monitor," and "Use this device as my primary monitor."

    After faffing about with it for a while (with most of this period of time consisting of my trying to figure out how to turn the monitor back on), I seem to have cracked it. Both the monitor and television are displaying at 1024*768 (100Hz and 60Hz respectively), with DVD video appearing on the television, but not the monitor - just what I wanted. As Japan said, this is hardly an ideal solution, but it's a solution nonetheless. I am curious, however, about the television. It's a bog-standard 21" CRT - in fact, it doesn't even have an S-Video port, I had to use an S-Video-SCART converter. It's a couple of years old now and certainly has no fancy HD features.

    How is it sitting there cheerily displaying in 1024*768? I thought that typical CRT SDTV's could only go as high as 640*480.

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
  • japanjapan Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    As I understand it, some PAL SDTVs use 1024 x 576 as their "native" widescreen resolution (at least, that's what XBMC outputs to my TV over RGB SCART). I suppose it's possible some manufacturers just bumped it up because there existing parts (presumably for monitors) designed to deal with that resolution.

    japan on
  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited April 2007
    TVs will still output in those higher resolutions, it just scales the image down.

    FyreWulff on
  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited April 2007
    Ah, I see. Well, thanks for all your help, folks, it's good to know that there is one constant on the 'net... helpful PA peeps. Cheers ^_^

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
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