Use iMac as a simple display

[gerhat]

Hello everybody.

Does anybody know if it is possible to use iMac as a simple display
i.e. connect a camcoder via s-video or composite to mini-DVI.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Leon Kowalski]

Hello everybody.

Does anybody know if it is possible to use iMac as a simple display
i.e. connect a camcoder via s-video or composite to mini-DVI.

Thanks in advance.

Do not attempt to do this. The iMac's mini-DVI is an output, not an input.

Connecting it to another video output risks hardware damage to both devices.

LK

 

[flopticalcube]

You can if you use an EyeTV to capture the video.

http://www.elgato.com/

 

[wehokev]

I checked out that EyeTV website, http://www.elgato.com/

None of their products seemed to accept a VGA input. Does anyone know of a product that has a VGA input and display it on the iMac?

-kevin

 

[CanadaRAM]

"display it on" is the wrong term.

You can take a signal (video, S-Video or composite or whatever) and Digitize it with an appropriate digitizer, and then send that captured DV data stream in the Firewire (or the USB) port of the iMac. Then, you can use a video editing program to display that DV data. There will be some lag between the input and the display, so it's likely not usable for games.

I haven't seen a VGA - to - Firewire convertor.

Please do a Search on the forums, we have covered this question about 20 times in the past year.

 

[Leon Kowalski]

Does anyone know of a product that has a VGA input and display it on the iMac?

I don't believe the iMac has any inputs with sufficient bandwidth to support full-resolution DVI- or VGA-equivalent video signals. It's no problem to digitize VGA (the cheapest LCD monitors do that); but once you've digitized the signal, you have to deal with all them bits.

The 20" iMac gobbles up: 1680 x 1050 x 60 Hz x 3 colors x 8-bits = 2.5+ Gb/sec

FW800 tops out at 0.8 Gb/sec -- three times too slow for even a 20" iMac.

Firewire and USB can handle various streaming video formats -- but nothing approaching the bandwidth of a full-resolution VGA or DVI video feed.

LK