Laptop VGA or s-video to TV

[mcseguy9]

Hello everyone. My dad has a laptop with both VGA and s-video outputs. He wants to connect the laptop to a television that has both s-video and RCA type connectors. He wants to do this to show a PowerPoint slide show on the TV. I've been told that s-video isn't all that great - it produces a lot of graininess(?). Is it possible to to use a VGA to RCA type of converter or adapter? What would be the best way to accomplish this?

[Teknophobia]

Here's what you need:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Premium-Comp.../dp/B000P3NZ68

TEk

[Teknophobia]

Sorry, you may also need to get a scart adapter (depends whether your TV has the RCA inputs or not).

TEk

[fink]

Try the Svideo first though if you need to buy any expensive hardware like scalers/adaptors/converters/etc. Because the best way of plugging a vga out into an rca (composite or component) input is to use a device called a scaler to create a compatible connection and to match resolution between the two devices.

Using a vga to component cable would be slightly better than svideo (especially if the cable needs to be longer than a few feet) but it's really just dividing the video signals (colors, horizontal, vertical and contrast/bright) into three discreet paths (triple rca) rather than 2 with svideo (all are combined into 1 with composite/single rca).

Note that the product in the link above from Teknophobia warns..

Your VGA card must support TV out directly through VGA port function.

which means if it doesn't then you'd need hardware as I've mentioned above. If your video card does support this and your tv has the appropriate inputs (3rca/YPbPr) then the Amazon cable would work ok but as I said not whole lot better than svideo. Remember that a standard crt television will not have high resolution like a computer monitor. You'd need a new LCD screen to get that sort of quality.


An svideo connection can be acceptable and it's what I"ve done with my PC to view streaming sports and media on television. A good Svideo cable (the shorter the better and less than 6 feet is recommended) should only be around 10-12 dollars and it is important to get a good Svideo cable not a cheapie.