Latitude D520 S-Video activate?

Hi,
I have a 4pin S-Video cable connected to the 7pin S-Video socket of my DVD Recorder and I can't seem to be able to display the PC on my TV.
- The DVD Recorder and the TV are set to the correct channels. I've proven this with a VCR.
- Fn+F8 does not work. Pressing this combo results in two flickers of the internal display
-Display Properties->Settings shows two screens. Screen 2 is greyed out. When I right click on this one and pressing "attached" results in the display being activated (in the dialog box but not the actual TV). Clicking "Apply" however results in Screen 2 once again being deactivated.
- I know the VGA out works as I've used this at work with a projector.

I'm now out of ideas! Is there anything I've missed?
side question: A 4pin S-Video connector can be used with a 7pin S-Video connector right?

Thanks a lot!

 

Have you tried connecting the laptop directly to your television? Yes, a standard 4-pin S-video cable should work fine.

 

Thanks for the quick feedback.
I found a suitable cable and yes this does indeed work. Stupid really not to have checked before. The picture is very poor however but I should be able to play around to get that looking better.
So I need to investigate what the problem is with the input to my DVD Recorder. Mabe there is an option which I need to switch on.
Thanks again

 

Don’t expect the picture to be as sharp as your LCD, because if you are talking of a non HD TV then the resolution is far less compared to your notebook. Text will be mostly unreadable, however for full screen Videos it is as good any other external video player.

 

Hi Again.
So I've verified that my DVD Recorder is OK. The S-Video input works fine with my wives HP laptop but I have the same problem with the D520.
On a different forum someone suggested changing the resolution and refresh rate of the laptop.
I've changed the resolution of my laptop down to 600x800 but still no luck. I also can not change the frequency. It is at 60Hz.
I'm wondering if I should invest in a VGA to S-Video cable if such a thing exists or would I have the same problem.

 

OK. I found a tip from WackyT in another thread about booting the laptop up with the SVideo cable connected and this works!!!
But now I have a black/white screen. The picture is also quite bad but I understand I can't really do PC work on the TV but watching a film would be acceptable.
The connectors are fully connected to both the laptop and the DVD recorder. Other ideas?
I still have the VGA_2_SVideo question

 

There are VGA to S-Video converter boxes out there. Why are you trying to connect your laptop to your DVD recorder?

 

Only for ease of use really. The AUX connectors on the DVD Recorder are easier to get to than the SCART connector on the back of the PC.
But I've just again tried the connection directly to the TV and this gives a really clear and 'colourful' picture. Again, connecting to the DVD Recorder gives a bad black and white picture. It would be ‘nice’ to be able to record something from the laptop onto the HDD of the DVD recorder but this was not my main aim.
So I guess I have to live with connecting the Dell to the TV.
Thanks anyway

 

A black and white low quality image is usually a result of a video standard (NTSC / PAL ) mismatch, check your DVD recorder video format and notebook’s TV out standard.

 

Yup. Go into your video card's settings and change the output to PAL. Bet your TV is a multisystem, and it's switching to NTSC upon detecting the notebook.

 

Yep works a dream when changing the DVD Recorder to NTSC!
(I can not find where in the graphic card settings I can change this.)
Thanks very much for the help both of you!

 

If you go into advanced display driver settings, it should be somewhere in there for the TV out.