TV as laptop monitor

[ZebrasKneecaps]

Please help....

Ive got a 500gig external hard drive full of movies so i thought rather than burn them all to DVD, i'd connect my laptop to my telly. Now, im no computer buff so forgive me for my terrible descriptions.

I bought an S-Video cable to connect to my laptop and at the telly end, it goes into a scart adapter and then the telly. As my laptop is brand spankers and has Vista Home Premium, as soon as i connected the cable, it did its own thing and then pumped it out to the telly at what it thought was the right settings.

Here's the problem, the picture was rolling from top to bottom and also cycling from black and white to some really funky cycadelic colours. When i checked the socket on my laptop there are 7 holes for pins but my cable only has 4 pins.

Am i doing something wrong? Cheers guys and gals DT_Xtremez_30:

 

[pie sandwich]

All i did with mine was use a monitor cable and it worked a treat, with no faffing around with settings, you could give that a go see if its any better

 

[ZebrasKneecaps]

All i did with mine was use a monitor cable and it worked a treat, with no faffing around with settings, you could give that a go see if its any better

monitor cable? the only monitor cables ive seen are actually attached to my monitors. can you get ones for the tv? DT_Xtremez_40:

 

[Hu Jardon]

I think they are called VGA cables, or at least that is what I use on mine only down side is you also need a micro jack connector for the sound, but appart from that its ace.

Depending on the graphics card in your laptop you may need to toggle the Fn F4 key (its that one on Acers and many others) to make the external monitor the prime display - on mine there is a choice between laptop only / laptop & external / external only - don't forget your laptop has only got a finite amount of graphics memory and may not have teh power to drive both at the same time - incidentally that may also clear up your rolling/black & white picture problem.

Hu

 

[MingMong]

Are your movies in PAL format?
If you try to play an NTSC film in a PAL only TV, the result that you will often get is a rolling picture that flicks between B&W and colour.
Maybe try some different films to see if you still get the same problem.

Newer TV's should be able to display either PAL or NTSC no problem.

 

[ZebrasKneecaps]

I think they are called VGA cables, or at least that is what I use on mine only down side is you also need a micro jack connector for the sound, but appart from that its ace.

Depending on the graphics card in your laptop you may need to toggle the Fn F4 key (its that one on Acers and many others) to make the external monitor the prime display - on mine there is a choice between laptop only / laptop & external / external only - don't forget your laptop has only got a finite amount of graphics memory and may not have teh power to drive both at the same time - incidentally that may also clear up your rolling/black & white picture problem.

Hu

Cheers for the reply, ive had a look on ebay for the cables. Do these look like the ones that will do the job?

If so, ill get them ordered.

Nice one DT_Xtremez_30:

 

[R_Squared]

They should do the job but I strongly suspect, as Mingmong has already said, that it is a format problem. NTSC attempting to be displayed on a PAL format TV.
There is conversion software out there, and a handy tutorial can be found here that may be of some help to you, but with the amount of files you have it looks like you may be in for a fairly long haul depending on the speed of your system.
That being the case I hope that is just a cabling problem,
Good luck.

 

[ZebrasKneecaps]

Nice one, ill have a look at the tutorial and see what happens.

I havent actually attempted to play a movie on the tv yet, it had the rolling screen and funny colours when it was just showing the desktop. Ive also found out that my tv can change between PAL and NTSC, mind you, i switched between the two and i was still having the same problem.

Once i get the cables, ill let you know what happpens. DT_Xtremez_28: