Hooking up macbook to tv

[malikk]

hello I bought recently,

PREMIUM 25FT 3.5mm Stereo Male to 2RCA Male 22AWG Cable - Gold Plated 1
VGA to S-Video/RCA (Composite) Adapter Cable - Black 1
Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter 1
25FT S-VIDEO CABLE DVD DSS SVHS CABLE SVIDEO M/M (24K Gold Plated)

Now i hooked up the displayport to the macbook then the vga to s-video/rca to that and ten the s-video cable to my tv. Although the macbook seems to recognize the 2nd screen fine. No video shows up on video 1-3.

Does anyone who is more "home theatre" savvy able to tell me why? I unhooked all the RCA cables as well, just incase they were mixing with the s-video.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[malikk]

bump any ideas guys? I know sometimes you ned a converter box. But I didn't think i needed one since I was still doing the audio and video seperately and everything.

 

[CWallace]

Does your TV have an HDMI, VGA or DVI input?

You could also try and find a Mini DisplayPort to S-Video adapter and then connect from that directly to the S-Video inputs on your TV.

 

[malikk]

Well it's not a lcd or led tv so it can't do vga/hdmi etc. But basically i have a mini displayport to a vga/s-video adapter... so i'm a little confused why this didn't work... it is recognized by the macbook it seems but no video shows up. I'm going to try to unplug EVERYTHING later and make sure just the s-video is plugged in... maybe something was on by accident, i'm not sure. But i'm unsure why getting a mini displayport-svideo would change the situation.

Again, I am not very knowledgable in this area so there may very well be something I am missing. My tv can pretty much (as far as i can tell) do RCA/S-Video.... it is 10+ years old.

 

[malikk]

I just tried hooking up a newer LCD TV to it (one with hdmi/vga etc.) through the S-VIDEO but it didn't work. The reason i did s-video becuase the tv I am trying to get it on is not working. I have had the same problem where the computer recognizes the screen BUT the screen stays blank. I am almost starting to think that the monoprice mini-displayport to vga i got does not work or something.

Almost ready to just buy a 20" LCD for 100 bucks or something, but I'd rather not spend the money at this point. :-/. Any ideas why anyone?

 

[marmac]

i have my macbook 2008 connected to my lcd tv using the following:http://www.abt.com/product/45060/Ka...=scfroogle&utm_medium=sc&utm_campaign=froogle
i had originally attempted using the mini display port to vga connected to vga to hdmi connector as advised by apple store sales person. did not work. contacted apple support and they told me it couldn't be done this way. so had to purchase the correct mini display port to hdmi connector online... they are no longer stocked in apple stores. voila!! worked like a charm.
so you might want to try to call apple support and see if they can help you..

 

[malikk]

Okay. At this point I will try giving them a call tomorrow. I figure at this point it has to be that one of the adapters I am using is not mac compatible or something. Since it is recognized but doesn't show up.

 

[balamw]

Try setting the resolution of your display to something close to 720x480 and see if you get any closer. It can also be that the resolution the VGA is putting out is too great for S-video and so the TV(s) are staying blank to stop from going kablooey. (in a CRT if the resolution/rfresh rate is too high you can actually damage the set so some displays have protection circuitry.)

B

 

[TheZA]

Check the obvious things first. Is the TV set up as an extension of your monitor or is it set up to mirror your monitor? This is a selection under monitor in system preferences.

 

[malikk]

I tried setting the resolution differently i'm pretty sure. I will double check tomorrow. I did make sure my monitor wasn't in mirror mode. What would I do if the s-video isn't working because of the hertz/resolution etc?

 

[malikk]

So, I retried it and put in different TV Settings. And for some reason instead of a black screen I got a black screen with static lines of some sort. Does anyone know what this means, and what can I do about it?

Also not sure if this matters but, I noticed that when i hook it up it says VGA display. So maybe the adapter I have is not working? Any ideas?

I tried again on the different tv settings. And I still get black and whtie... but on some settings (i think the lower settings with low refresh rate) i get a VERY distorted unusable picture and i move around the vga display settings box and it moves on the tv.

So my guess is maybe the displayport adapter is not compatbile with apple? Or just that the tv isn't compataible with the new macbook or something? I tried almost every setting and had no luck beyond balck and white and very distorted with still fuzzy lines (snow).