The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    gateway P-6831 FX - to TV

    Discussion in 'Gateway and eMachines' started by ericm239, Aug 7, 2008.

  1. ericm239

    ericm239 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I have a gateway P-6831 and I'm trying to get it connected to my TV. The TV I have only has RCA and S/VIDEO ports. I was wondering if any of you have successfully connected your laptop to a TV and will be able to help. Thanks.
     
  2. Omnipresent

    Omnipresent Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    10
    Messages:
    30
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Even if you were able to hook it up, using RCA or S-Video, the picture would look horrible. You need component, vga or hdmi, to get a good picture.
     
  3. Mikelx215

    Mikelx215 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    132
    Messages:
    474
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Depends if we're talking HD or SD variety TVs. On a plain old SDTV S-Video will work just fine.

    Are you just trying to hook up Halo to your basement TV, or are you planning on using your home theater system as a primary monitor?
     
  4. ericm239

    ericm239 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    The TV is an HDTV but it does not have VGA or HDMI ports, only RCA and S/VIDEO. I would like to be able to use it to just watch movies that are downloaded on my laptop so that I would have a larger screen to view the movies.
     
  5. Mikelx215

    Mikelx215 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    132
    Messages:
    474
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    By RCA, I'm hoping you mean component (YPbPr) and not composite.

    In order of quality for what you have: Component > S-Video > Composite.

    Good luck finding an adapter for component, though.
     
  6. win32asmguy

    win32asmguy Moderator Moderator

    Reputations:
    1,012
    Messages:
    2,844
    Likes Received:
    1,699
    Trophy Points:
    181
    What you would need is a device called a scan converter. An example of such a device is this. The reason why you cannot use a simple adapter cable is because the HDMI port does not support any analog signal and the VGA port does not support NTSC signalling. A few manufacturers do provide adapters with their laptops (such as Apple's TV/Video output adapter from their DVI-I port) however such an adapter works with the video card's bios and the driver to send a proper output signal.