Hi,

I'm trying to connect my laptop to my TV via s-video... I bought an s-video to scart lead off Ebay, connect it to the video player, turn on the video player's AV channel and nothing happens, its just a black screen as if I didn't even do anything. I tried setting it up with the laptop (it has a SiS650 chipset) and it did nothing, tried setting the tv up as mirror, extra monitor, even main monitor and nothing worked...

Thing that is interesting, however, is that when I, say, decide to try and tune a new channel in this VCR (it has a blue background when tuning) I can make out that there is a slight fuzz which is, for sure, the laptop, for it changes when I open different programs on the laptop. Basically, it seems to be trying to stop the laptop from appearing on screen...

So, any possibility of some help on this issue? I'd be very grateful

Does your VCR/TV have true S-Video input? The SCART connector has the leads for S-Video, but they may not be connected. Try pressing the AV button several times and see if it cycles through multiple inputs.

What sort of an output port does your laptop have? It it has more than four pins (standard S-Video), then you may be able to get composite output instead, which is supported by virtually everything.

I don't know if my VCR/TV do have true S-Video input... How would I go about finding out?

It doesn't seem to cycle through multiple inputs, its just the one black screen.

The laptop, unfortunately, has the standard S-Video (4 pin). It also does have the 15-pin VGA connector too...

It just seems so odd that I can pick up a faint blur on the TV of the laptop, but nothing more... What could be the explanation of this, do you think?

The blur is probably some interference.. An echo from the S-Video pins in the SCART to the composite pin?

You could dig out the product manuals and see if they say anything about S-Video or SVHS. It is pretty common for low end equipment to lack S-Video support.

You have two more options:
- There are adapters that give you composite output from S-Video. You could buy one of these, plg it into your laptop and then a simple RCA cable (if your TV has these inputs) or a RCA-to-SCART cable. You can even do a horrible dirty trick and simply short two wires in the S-Video cable to get a crude composite signal..

- Buy a converter box that takes VGA input and output either S-Video or composite or whatever.

I found this on Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SVHS-S-Video-...ryZ32837QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Would it do the trick, do you think?

The VCR is a low-end one, so yes it probably doesn't support s-video...

Thanks for your help so far!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. BTW, you need an audio cable too since you are no longer using SCART.

Yeah, thats kind of confused me - if I was to have the ability to use scart from s-video, wouldn't sound still come from the laptop speakers as well as the tv?
I have pretty good speakers for the laptop, so I think I'll just use them