Hi all, I've built a fairly plain media pc for the living room, but unfortunately the TV is a little dated. The best connection is through component. The video card I'm using is a fairly cheap one that has VGA, DVI, and s-video out. Now I know that just because a cable has the right connections doesn't necessarily mean the signal is compatible. It is a ATI HD 3400 series, and looking up the features I found the following: Integrated AMD Xilleon™ HDTV encoder Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite) Sounds like it might work, but the marketing speech is throwing me off. I'm guessing if it did work, the component signal would be carried through the VGA port? Also another thing I might add is if this did work, would the cables be bi-directional? Or would I have to specifically order one that was VGA to component?
It's been a LONG time since I hooked up an old tv like that. But I remember there being some sort of svideo to component adapter that used to come with ati cards way back then. Also as a good rule of thumb, set the resolution and refresh low and work your way up. Getting old tv to show picture from pc can be quite fussy. Many old tv can't handle more than 30hz at 640x480.
Ah, I think you're right. Upon searching more I came upon this image Looks extremely familiar, but I bought the card almost 4 years ago so I would have to look pretty hard to find this.
I've never used it but I got one of these with my card quite a few years ago. Plugs into a dedicated port, not sure how things would work on your card. http://www.amazon.com/5511A001-001-...mposite-E156277-5511a001-001-lf/dp/B0045JT698
the picture quality will be horrible as its still S-video not component even if your changing the connections. If it works you would be better using DVI to component although it may not be possible depending on your TV
you need to look closely at the Svideo connector if it is infact an s video conector they are often 9 pin din connectors that will accept an s video connector or the component video conector you pictured above. some of the cheaper cards just use an s video conector so you can't get component video out (even though the card supports it) If you can get a component out the picture quality will be fine it can be 720p or 1080i. you can't get a DVI to component or VGA to component cable as they are not the same thing you need some electronics to convert eiter of thoses (athough you can buy cables that would appear to be component to VGA but there are actually only for use on screens with a VGA in that will accept component on that input (many projectors do this)).
I had an old Gigabyte 6600GT which happily output component video, so I remember being able to do it - it was a breakout box which connected to the s-video type connector on the board. I seem to recall running it at 720p. BUT - if that fails, there's something called HDFury, IIRC, which might help you. They change hands reasonably frequently on eBay (the newer ones do all sorts of things you probably won't need), and will convert digital video to 3x RCA. Bit of an expensive solution though, perhaps.
That's not correct, you've got your facts wrong. You can't pipe an S-video connection down component cables. S-video is a two wire connection (Y/C) vs component's three (Y/Pb/Pr). S-Video is limited to 480i while component will handle 1080p. Depending on the devices at each end it's possible for a component driven display to produce results that are near indistinguishable from HDMI. It's also impossible to drive a component input with a DVI signal. You can't pipe a digital signal into analogue connections. If the socket supports it and feeds a component signal it may be possible to use something like: http://www.tvcables.co.uk/images/items/dvi-component-video-adapter.jpg But that's just an adaptor, the component source is still coming directly from the chipset, and it won't matter where the component comes from (Separate sockets, DVI, breakout cable).
A DVI output from a graphics card is DVI-I unless you have some freak GPU therefore carries both a digital signal and analog one. hence you can get DVI-VGA cables with no extra electronics for conversion.
But VGA does not equal Component, there is no such thing as passive conversion from VGA (RGBHV) to Component (Y/Pr/Pb)
