John said:
Google for 'hdmi to composite converter'.
One here for $41.
http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-Composit...1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1336142746&sr=1-1
One here for $197
http://www.amazon.com/GefenTV-HDMI-...2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1336142746&sr=1-2
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=5280
There can be a couple issues with things like this:
1) HDMI converters are not allowed to support HDCP. If an HDMI output is
scrambled with HDCP encryption, it's to "protect" the signal so it cannot
be copied. Depending on the movie playing situation, and the whim of
the industry, you might not get a signal depending on what you're doing.
If you just copy the desktop image via video, and it isn't using HDCP,
that might work. If you went from VGA to composite, VGA doesn't have
an equivalent of HDCP, but depending on the movie playing situation,
if the signal was high definition, the player could choose not to output
a signal, unless it detected a protected video path. I'm no expert on movie
playback, so this is just a warning to investigate further. The policies
on movies, have become more restrictive with time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Media_Path
2) SVideo and Composite are bandwidth limited. You can't squeeze a 1920x1080
signal into the scan lines of the interleaved composite signal. All of the
adapters will have some degree of scaling. And a function called convolution,
to improve the appearance of the image. Depending on the details of the
adapter, you may have to drop the output resolution setting of the HDMI
output, to improve the image quality.
Movies are likely to work OK with a resolution setting of 640x480. That's
the least demanding setting, in terms of the properties of the adapter box.
Don't expect to be able to read small text fonts, via that converted signal.
Movie playback works, because the human eye is forgiving of blemishes in
motion video. If you tried to present 640x480 text over a composite connection,
the text will be so blurry, you won't be able to read any of it. The lettering
would have to be in extra-large letters. I've tried doing this, when running
a FreeBSD box over composite to a TV set, and while I could tell there were
lines of text, I couldn't read any of it.
And time will tell, what the color balance looks like.
Read the reviews for each brand of adapter, to see, relatively
speaking, how good a job they do.
*******
Cards like the 7900GT (four or five years old), are examples of some
of the last cards, to have composite, SVHS, or component output. The
mini-DIN is where that output appears. My video card looks similar
to this faceplate.
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/14-130-281-02.jpg
This article, describes some of the pinout options for the old mini-DIN
interfaces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-din
Since, when I've tested the mini-DIN in the past, the output always sucked,
I haven't even tried testing my current video card. It has that connector
on it. I've seen so much bad output, I haven't tried the output of my
current card. My TV seems to be a major part of the suckage - bad
composite input port design. If I run the video card mini-DIN, into a
RadioShack channel 3 modulator, the output looks so much nicer. Almost
like it's a DC restoration problem.
I use this kind of thing, to go from a $50 DVD player, to a cheap TV
with no baseband input. Since the TV is a portable, and has a small screen,
it's hard to spot defects. But it works a lot better this way, than
I've been able to get on the other TV via its composite input. The
modulator makes things look better, which is pretty hard to believe
in terms of what it's doing to the signal. Extra "things" in the path
like this, should only make the signal look worse. Now that the analog
changeover has occurred, there is no longer any analog antenna signal
to use, so the TV (on channel 3) can be reused as a dedicated DVD player
viewing device.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103095
Paul
