A S-Video connection fried both my laptop and TV! Help needed!

[dupuis_gabriel]

Hello,

Recently, I had a big power surge problem involving both my brand new
laptop and my less than two years old TV. Two total looses.

My main concern is that I don't really understand what happened and,
thereof, can't see a way to prevent it in the future.

Here's the story :

I bought a few weeks ago an HP notebook with an S-Video output. I used
my laptop (on battery and AC power) a week and a half before trying the
S-Video output and did not have a single problem.

So, someday, I decided it was time to try to connect my laptop on my TV
by using the S-Video output. I bought a S-Video-to-RCA cable at
Radioshack because I thought it would be more practical to have my
laptop connected to the front RCA jacks of my TV.

As soon as the contact was made, both my laptop and TV went off and I
could smell a light odour of burnt electronic components. The TV did
not seem to be damaged because I could turn it on almost immediately.
As for the laptop, I simply had to reinsert the battery to make it
start.

Maybe it was very stupid, but I thought that the problem could be the
cheap RadioShack cable. So I decided to buy a true S-Video cable.

For my second try, I choose to not plug the laptop into the AC outlet
and just use the battery. After connecting the laptop to the TV, all I
see is a black screen. By the way, I did not feel like there was a
power surge problem this time.

Days later, I really wanted to make my S-Video port work. So, I
downloaded the latest devices drivers for my graphic card and gave the
S-Video output a new try with the laptop connected to the AC outlet.
Not a good idea.

Again, as soon as the contact was made, both my laptop and TV went off
and I could smell a strong odour of burnt electronic components. This
time the damage was terrible. Both my laptop and TV are completely
fried. There is just no way to make'em work anymore.

So my questions are :

1) What happened ?
2) How could I prevent this kind of surge ?
3) Should I never try to connect a laptop to a TV ?

I made a diagram of my living room electrical setup. You can see it at
this URL : http://home.ca.inter.net/~gdupuis/livingroomsetup.jpg

I don't think that the problem is from my TV since it is almost new
and because it never fried my DVD player or VCR. I guess the problem
comes from my laptop, but I still don't really understand.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I really need to understand
since I don't know much about electricity.

Thank you very much.

(By the way, I am very sorry for the poor English. It is not my
language.)

 

[Apollo]

I would try posting this in sci.electronics.misc, there are lots
of people there with good TV electronics knowledge.

 

[Max]

Test all your outlets with a $5 ground tester you plug into the outlet. One
thing the instructions say is that you should make the s-video connection
while everything is powered off. I've never had a problem connecting video
cables while everything is on, just except for that I need to reboot my
computer sometimes to get the video card to detect that it's plugged into a
TV.

One other thing that's funky about svideo is there are two types -- one is
bi-directional meaning it will act as a video IN and OUT. My HP notebook
only does out.

It could just be on of the components was bad and caused this. If I had to
point my finger at anything I'd say it's the ATI video chip (I believe your
HP uses ATI). One of the things HP does in their 23 point checklist before
shipping it to you probably is NOT hooking it up to a TV to check to see if
video out works properly.

-Max