VGA to Composite

I just purchased this converter for my Asus V6J. Since I only have a VGA out on my notebook, this was my only option for displaying on my TV. Unfortunately, when I plug it in to the laptop and the TV, I can't get it to switch to display on the TV. I already pressed fn+f8, but the only option it gives me is laptop display only. Has anybody had any luck with this sort of adapter?

 

Did you try to reboot with the TV plugged in. I remember I had an old laptop that wouldn't recognize that something was plugged in unless it was there before booting

 

Nope, still doesn't work.

I don't understand why it won't recognize it. Does it have to send some sort of message back to the laptop to indicate that it's an external monitor?

 

That only works with video cards which support a TV out through the VGA connector. You'll have to check into if yours does or not.

What this means is there's a few pins on the VGA connector which are used for the TV output, and not used when plugging in a normal monitor. All that adapter does is provide a port for those pins, but that does no good if the pins are not active to begin with.

If it turns out the laptop / video card doesn't support tv out (again, you'll have to check, I'm not saying it doesn't) then you'll need a more expensive adapter which actually uses the VGA signal (pretending to be a monitor and converting it).

What qwester was referring to is true as well. Video devices are supposed to pose a 75-ohm load on the video output of whatever they're connected to. Some video cards (ATIs mostly from what I've read) expect to see this 75-ohm load indicating that a proper device is connected before they will enable the tv-out port. The problem comes with cheaply built equipment not showing the 75-ohm load that they are supposed to. There is software to override this (force tv out on) but I don't remember what it's called.

Good luck

 

I have one of these cables for my Acer 3003, aparently that laptop supports tv out via this cable, but I had no luck. I manged to make the tv flash a few times when I was changing settings, I managed to get a black & white image that I could just make out as the desktop, but the image was fashing past the screen so many times, different resolution / refresh rate didn't help much, im working if there are some settings / pla / ntsc etc that I can't access. I gave up on it in the end, my other lpatop has s-video out so thts good, but i would still like to get this cable working on my other.