BEAK said:
I have tried both a s-video cord and a USG cord(?) to connect to my TV. I
get only a blank screen. Is there some sort of driver or setting I need to
change to see something on the TV? I went to the control panel under display
but I could not figure anything out. I tried both cables on a Sony and a
Phillips TV and I tried it on both my lap top and my wifes. I am sure it is
operator error, so......
Please help.
Thank you.
Are you sure it isn't a TV problem ?
To start, do you have a VCR ? If the VCR connects via composite or S-video,
that gives you an opportunity to verify that the TV works on that input.
On my current TV, the remote channel changer must be navigated
below "Channel 3" to the "video" setting, and then the TV will
look at its video input. Check your TV documentation, to be sure that
the video input is the currently selected source for the TV.
Once you've verified the TV set, by using a VCR as a stimulus,
you can go back to trying the computer.
As far as the computer is concerned, at that point in time, it
might be in dual display mode. If you look at the Display
control panel, do Advanced and look at the video card specific
options, you might see a dual display like this shown. In
my control panel, you actually have to select the new icon
that appears, and "slide" it into the main status display,
to "make" a dual display. At that point, a popup menu asks
me what I'm trying to do. The options offered aren't very
descriptive. I used "Extended" to get something that looked
like this.
+-------+ +-----+
| | | 2 |
| 1 | | |
| | +-----+
+-------+ ^
|
+-----+ | (Slide gray icon up into active area, beside "1")
| | -----+ (It should become "2")
+-----+
You want to select the one that corresponds to the TV
set, and set it to 640 x 480 resolution. The control panel
may have already selected a refresh rate consistent
with TV (TV is 30 frames per second, is interleaved,
and gets 60 fields per second to draw the screen).
I expect it'll be set to 60Hz for refresh, but you
never know. (In a PAL country, maybe it'll be 50Hz.)
The max resolution to the TV will likely be 1024 x 768,
but that setting tends to really wash out text. Your
choices might be 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768.
I just tried to set this up, by booting into my other
OS and testing, and the setup was no fun at all. I tried
to extend the desktop to both displays, which worked
fine, but then I got greedy and tried to change the
resolution. The primary display ended up with some
weird resolution, and I could barely access the resolution
menu item to fix it. So there is plenty of fun ahead for
you. (Since the Display panel waits 15 seconds for confirmation
you like the changes, don't click "OK" on there unless you're
absolutely sure you want to keep the results. For example,
if both screens go black, wait patiently for the 15 seconds
to pass, and the settings to revert on their own to the
old values.)
One other tiny detail - some video cards have a bit of
a problem doing impedance sensing on the video output.
In some cases, the control panel will offer a "Force
detection" button for handling TVs. That is supposed to
enable the output, even if the impedance sensing doesn't
think a cable and 75 ohm load are present. I didn't
particularly have a problem here - I exited from the
Display control panel, plugged in the TV (using an
S-video to composite adapter plug in my case), and
the next time I went into the Advanced section of
the Display control panel, I could see the icon showing
a new display was present. If you're not seeing any
option offered there, then look for the "Force" option.
In terms of manuals, for Nvidia, there are a number of
PDF documents on the web site. Some releases of display
drivers, include another URL to get a PDF manual. The
introduction of the "new" versus "classis" Display
control panel though, means less documentation from
them (which sucks). The "new" control panel is not
as user friendly.
With ATI, the situation is worse (if at all possible).
I tried a while back, to get a manual documenting Catalyst
Control Center. The document on the ATI site, was a four page
brochure, instead of the manual. I did find a manual on
the VisionTek site, ccc.pdf . So while there is some
documentation, if is almost impossible to find. And the
copy on the VisionTek site is now out of date. So these
companies really mean you to figure out everything by
looking at their stupid icons and stuff. On my ATI,
it took me a while to see that icon below the main
status area of the display, and "slide" the icon up
next to "1".
Paul
