PC to CRT via S-Video people?

[Green Chamber]

Anyone else do this? Been having issues getting certain media to appear on the TV. Been googlin, wondered if there were sages amongst us here.

[T-1000]

It´s what kept me alive for more than 3 years by now. If you combine that with fast hdsl and a rapidshare account -

I am thinking about buying one of those amazing hd flatscreens though.

[Green Chamber]

OK well let me posit a simple question for you, my pal. Have you ever had issues with movie files being played on the PC showing up as a blank, black void on the television screen? Streaming media, video games, any other funstuff displays on both the mointor and the TV perfectly - but downloaded media (read: AVIs) will simply not display on the television. Haven't been able to find much help, but I've read a bit about issues with DIVx compression nonsense, wich frankly I haven't quite been able to wrap my mind around yet.

[Gookstorm]

Post your software and hardware setup, then we'll talk

[Zerohero]

do dice... tried the same... s-video to NEW modern tymes TEEVEE, works easy mans,

old Teevee, don't werk

[Green Chamber]

Post your software and hardware setup, then we'll talk

Pretty basic, nothing unusual - XP box with an ATI Radeon x1050 (7-pin S-Video port standard, no weird adapter) connected to CRT. Use CCCP-bundled version of WMP Classic to open media, although no other player will work.

I'm considering simply buying a divx compatible DVD player with a USB port... I've found many people with the same issue as me, but no real solutions. I'm not fucking spending the cash for a flatscreen.

[Hypnagogia]

I've encountered this before...try disabling your main screen, and setup the TV as the only display; it should work.

[Green Chamber]

I've encountered this before...try disabling your main screen, and setup the TV as the only display; it should work.

Hah! That is bizarre! Works, although now I have to choose which screen gets priority. Either way, thanks brah!

[Gookstorm]

Use CCCP-bundled version of WMP Classic to open media, although no other player will work.

Likely culprit found. CCCP is what anime addicts recommend and it's kind of bloated now and, while it includes ffdshow, the config is kind of messed up I've found. Most people live fine with ffdshow, Haali Media Splitter, and ac3filter. I open stuff fine in Media Player Classic and WMP. Bonus is that a lot of video previews work right that normally wouldn't.

The other possibility is that your ATI driver sucks at S-Video output and is messing up there. Also, make sure your TV can support progressive video (S-Video supports it, but some old-ass TVs won't do shit or even break when given a progressive signal).

You're going to find it's tough to get people to help you out on the Internet with your old-school setup (seriously, it's what people were doing about 11 years ago for a media PC, no joke).

I've encountered this before...try disabling your main screen, and setup the TV as the only display; it should work.

Typically works for laptops, not sure if the same limitations apply for desktop class systems with better video chipsets than on laptops.

Edit: wtf, your desktop video card sucks at splitting up the signal between two screens? Never had that happen on a desktop unless it was a really low-end shitty Intel, Cirrus Logic, or S3 chip in the early part of the decade. Talk about doesn't make sense.

[Green Chamber]

knowledge

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Use CCCP-bundled version of WMP Classic to open media, although no other player will work.

Likely culprit found. CCCP is what anime addicts recommend and it's kind of bloated now and, while it includes ffdshow, the config is kind of messed up I've found. Most people live fine with ffdshow, Haali Media Splitter, and ac3filter. I open stuff fine in Media Player Classic and WMP. Bonus is that a lot of video previews work right that normally wouldn't.

The other possibility is that your ATI driver sucks at S-Video output and is messing up there. Also, make sure your TV can support progressive video (S-Video supports it, but some old-ass TVs won't do shit or even break when given a progressive signal).

You're going to find it's tough to get people to help you out on the Internet with your old-school setup (seriously, it's what people were doing about 11 years ago for a media PC, no joke).

I've encountered this before...try disabling your main screen, and setup the TV as the only display; it should work.

Typically works for laptops, not sure if the same limitations apply for desktop class systems with better video chipsets than on laptops.

Edit: wtf, your desktop video card sucks at splitting up the signal between two screens? Never had that happen on a desktop unless it was a really low-end shitty Intel, Cirrus Logic, or S3 chip in the early part of the decade. Talk about doesn't make sense.

Thanks for your input. Honestly, with regard to my rig, "old-school" isn't even in the running for an adequate descriptor. It's a fucking noneuclidean frankenstein of cobbled-together obsolete/kvlt consumer electronics. It's my baby. Buying a modern television would actually complicate things as I'd need to add more work-around devices and switches to keep my vintage shit connected. As always, though, thanks for your attention and wisdom.

[Wehttam]

do dice... tried the same... s-video to NEW modern tymes TEEVEE, works easy mans,

old Teevee, don't werk

this is not true. it all depends on the video card set up. I've done this for years on an old when S-Video just came out tube TV.

[Hypnagogia]

I've encountered this before...try disabling your main screen, and setup the TV as the only display; it should work.

Typically works for laptops, not sure if the same limitations apply for desktop class systems with better video chipsets than on laptops.

Edit: wtf, your desktop video card sucks at splitting up the signal between two screens? Never had that happen on a desktop unless it was a really low-end shitty Intel, Cirrus Logic, or S3 chip in the early part of the decade. Talk about doesn't make sense.

I think it's supposed to be an anti-piracy type thing. The video is playing, but it just displays a black box. you can move the playback window around and do a screen capture and see that it is purposefully blacking it out.

It's different nowadays because the TV is treated as a monitor, rather than a "TV out".

[Gookstorm]

Dude, HDCP was only made like 6 years ago or so, and S-Video has been around since like the 80s. Signal-level piracy protection was only implemented with HDMI, so that's out of the equation. In fact, one work-around to pirating Blu-Rays is grabbing them from SD sources like S-Video or component, so old-ass tech won't involve anti-piracy measures. I doubt the guy's playing Blu-Rays when he's using S-Video cables from an older ATI card.

The reason some videos can't be screen captured is because they're normally played in a different buffer than what the OS can "see" through a screenshot. This has been the case since around '99 I think it was when DirectX 8 or 9 showed up introducing some new buffers for video accel features on video cards. If you use a different overlay mode (like in Media Player Classic or via different options in mplayer), you should be able to get a screenshot regardless of whether there's HDCP or whatever. The downside is that it'll use up more CPU and memory and possibly skip more in theory. Almost all real-time video is rendered on that hardware now by default on almost every modern OS, even on shitty $.25 Intel video cards.

In this case, the reason the video card can't split the signal to both monitor and TV is because:
a. it's too damned slow to do two separate video signals (in hardware, yes! hardware doesn't instantly mean "omg speeeedd"). You can test this by dropping your monitor's resolution to something ludicrous like 320x200 (or 640x480x4bits) and doing double output. I see this happen all the time when people hook laptops up for presentations even now on $1500+ laptops (sad, huh? Blame Intel).
b. the driver sucks (and the specific part that sucks likely hasn't been updated for years, BTW)
c. there's some hardware restrictions (like forcing bigass page flips or forcing vsync @ certain Hz and such) that make it impossible to do both TV out and VGA / DVI out reasonably well.
d. all of the above (most likely scenario)

Just get a new TV and a new receiver. I promise the setup will be tons easier and likely higher quality. I have an old Acurus receiver and poweramp setup and it's now the weak part of my setup because it requires tons of cables. With the Pioneer receiver I'm getting, it'll be speaker wires, power cable, and 1 cord per source - no more RCA cable nightmares. Jooiiiinnnnn ussssssss

[neckbeard]

Diduknow all those non-HDCP ports are illegal to put in machines soon?

[Krieg]

I've encountered this before...try disabling your main screen, and setup the TV as the only display; it should work.

Typically works for laptops, not sure if the same limitations apply for desktop class systems with better video chipsets than on laptops.

Edit: wtf, your desktop video card sucks at splitting up the signal between two screens? Never had that happen on a desktop unless it was a really low-end shitty Intel, Cirrus Logic, or S3 chip in the early part of the decade. Talk about doesn't make sense.

He was having 2 "desktops" (2 displays) instead of copying the same display to 2 outputs and either the driver or the hardware did not support acceleration in the second display (or it was miss configured).

No "split" of signals. This is a very common problem/mistake even with newest hardware.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=accelera ... 167a3fb4f3

[Necrometer]

Just get a new TV and a new receiver.

Fucking LOVE these quick fixes...

[Gookstorm]

He was having 2 "desktops" (2 displays) instead of copying the same display to 2 outputs and either the driver or the hardware did not support acceleration in the second display (or it was miss configured).

No "split" of signals. This is a very common problem/mistake even with newest hardware.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=accelera ... 167a3fb4f3

I re-read his problem again and you're probably correct here, but the setup is still vague to me honestly. I interpreted what he's saying as a fullscreen blank with a mirrored display, not an extended desktop setup with blank area where the video is.

Whatever the case, his analog days are numbered.

Fucking LOVE these quick fixes...

Sometimes throwing money at the problem is the correct solution.