OT: How to output PC display to s-video device?

will-3 wrote on 10/25/2009, 4:40 PM
We want to take the PC's display and send it to a Video Mixer's s-video input... so...

1 - Is there a card for a desktop PC that will output the PC's display as an s-video signal?

2 - Is there an external device that can take the video from a laptop via a usb or firewire port and convert it to an s-video signal?

and...

3 - Is there a way to send the PC's display out a firewire port so that it could be sent to a firewire input on a digital video mixer?

Thanks for any help.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/25/2009, 5:26 PM
There's a whole class of devices called "PC to TV". These take a standard DB-15 SVGA signal from the computer's video card and then let you connect to your regular monitor and to composite or S-video. Normally they don't support resolutions higher than 800x600. Most will down-convert 1024x768 but it will look fuzzier than 800x600.

You should be able to find these online or in most computer stores. I just happened to see them in both Office Max and Radio Shack this afternoon in the $150 range. Check ebay for used units a lot cheaper. searching for "PC to TV" should give you a lot of hits.
farss wrote on 10/25/2009, 5:26 PM
The best tool for doing this, one that we have two of and works is the Sony 1024 Scan Converter. There are others around, I think Roland do a pretty good unit as well. The 1024 new cost us around $6K, money well spent. You might get lucky and find one cheaply on eBay but I doubt it, those who have them don't let them go.

Some video cards do have a S-Video port. I have used this but it can be a bear as from memory you have to match screen res and frame rate to the video standard.

Regardless one thing you really need to factor in is this.
Anything beyond VGA res (and even that) will like like crud at video resolution. Converting XVGA to S-Video and feeding that into a vision switcher to then feed a projector is not such a smart move at all.

There is a much better way to do this. There's a number of vision switchers that feed hires RGB over DVI etc to a projector and will also scale video and switch it into that stream. The Roland V8 is one and they are not expensive and are selling like hot cakes.

This preserves the resolution of the PC output to the projector so it doesn't look like a fur ball and the video looks pretty good as well.

Bob.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/25/2009, 8:02 PM
using a vid card with svid out is the cheapest option. My ATI 8500 had that built in & I got that years ago. The newer ones come with adapters in most cases, but my current ATI has 2 DVI's & a multi-use out which is svid & composite.

At best that's 640x480. As long as your screen res is a ratio of that it will scale just fine, but if it's not the output will end up panning when you move your mouse.

I've done svid to a DV VCR & the output was AMAZING. Not HD quality but I had 60+fps progressive computer game footage put to 30i DV tape & it looked, for lack of a better word, perfect. At SD res but there was no judder, skipping, etc. The card's digital to analog converter takes care of it.