Video from PC to TV

  • Thread starter Thread starter Clayton
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C

Clayton

Hi,
my old notebook has a s-video connection on it which allowed me to send my
avi movies to watch on the TV, but my new notebook doesn't have s-video,
does someone know if there is a PCMCIA card or USB to s-video adapter out
there? I want to be pretty mobile and don't want to cart around converter
boxes etc.

cheers
 
What make and model of notebook? Maybe it has HDMI? Did you check the
hardware requirements you had before purchasing the notebook?
 
Clayton said:
yes ic, why would they sell them then? they must have tested it before
making it
Click to expand...

I think I'd be searching for a display control panel, with an option
to put a GPU into that mode first. If I saw that in a menu, then I'd go
shopping for the adapter. Consider, for a moment, that it would represent
an interaction between the VGA characteristic of the output connector,
and the TV options. Modern display controls have those separated, so you
can imagine that such an option would spoil the "purity" of the
display panel design. (I.e. If TV was enabled, the VGA section would
have to be grayed out, to indicate it was disabled. And then a naive
user wouldn't be able to figure out what was going on.)

References to that "adapter cable" comes up every once in a while, but I
have yet to find a description of a working setup. So maybe they worked years
ago, before GPUs got so fancy. I seem to remember there was an output
option for the Mac, that mentioned "convolution" and "flicker reduction",
and those are ingredients of scan conversion. But that would be a few
years back.

http://www.vintage-box.de/Support/dv/flickering.html

On the Mac, the TV signal was apparently on the green gun, but
connecting the green signal via a coax cable, gives a gray scale
signal on the TV set. (It is possible, that in the day, I may have
actually built that adapter, but that would be a lot of years ago.
The very first computer monitor I acquired, was based on a 12 inch
monochrome TV set, with a large coax connector on the back, and a
hole in the front of the set where the tuner used to go. It cost me
$150.) So used directly, there is no color, just monochrome. Maybe
the PC went through a similar transition at some point in the past,
but I haven't seen any details.

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/mac/misc/documentation/centrisquadravideo.txt

Card Connector RCA-Type Phono-Connector
-------------- ------------------------
4 MON.ID1 (sense0) --|
7 MON.ID2 (sense1) --| <--- sense code requests TV output mode
11 C&VSYNC.GND --------|

5 GRN.VID -----------------> Tip (signal)
Shell CHASSIS.GND --------------> Sleeve (ground)

Paul
 
I travel alot and have many movies on my computer which I would like to
watch on TV, I don't really want to start carting around converter boxes,
maybe something small will be ok I guess
 
Clayton said:
Or is there a pcmcia card out there that can achieve this?
Click to expand...

I think the problem with that idea, is when they develop
adapters, they tend to put VGA connectors on them. Finding
something with S-video or composite is more difficult. I
think the engineers are concentrating on supporting external
monitors first. Although a lot of laptops will already
have a VGA connector.

http://sewelldirect.com/vtbookpcmciacard.asp
http://www.villagetronic.com/vtbook/index.html

I checked whether anyone put video on an Expresscard
(modern version of PCMCIA, but 250Mb/sec bus bandwidth).
Expresscard.org thinks it cannot be done, but of course
they're wrong :-) You could, for example, \build a simple
DMA engine into an Expresscard, and simply pull the entire
picture, frame after frame, from main memory. (That would be
sufficient for television at least.) In the same way that
built-in graphics do it. Such a card would have no 3D support,
and would only be of use for rendering a frame buffer stored
in system memory. Someone familiar with programming FPGAs
could do a project like that. The PCI Express interface is what
scares most people away, but that is probably
integrated into FPGAs by now. So while a full traditional
GPU might not fit, something to do TV could.

http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/qa.jsp

Another option for playback, would be if the
computer delivered an MPEG2 stream over USB.
A chip like this, part of a set top box, appears
to be a way to render a movie to a TV output.
I haven't been able to find something like this
for TV playback from a computer though.

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~geobrown/publications/sti5301.pdf

I think at this point, a scan converter is the
most readily available solution. I recommend
reading reviews, so if you can find them
listed on Amazon or Newegg, you might find
out whether the thing you're interested in,
is worth having.

Have you considered just carrying your old laptop
on the road, or is the lease up on it ?

Paul
 
The lease is up on the old one, thanks for your input, I'll read up on what
you have suggested
 
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