Hope someone can help!

I have just bought a Dell XPS420 with the Windows Media Centre software on it, along with a digital TV board etc. I want to connect this directly to the TV for watching DVDs, internet use etc, however the TV only has an S-video link / Scart / red, yellow & white jack plugs etc, and doesn't have DVI. It's a really good (Sony) TV, so I don't really want to change this. How can I get it working (including sound, as the TV has a good cinema surround system as well)?

I was hoping that there was something that went from DVI to Scart, which would send sound signal and picture to TV? All I need to do then is switch it the the relevant AVI set-up when I want to view the computer?

Is this possible ?

 

Is it DVI-A, DVI-D or DVI-I

?

 

well, it is.. but i am not sure if it works though as i have never tested it

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...154ZXTQVM5GF7N


http://www.amazon.com/6ft-component-...6855011&sr=8-1

(and from there you could get an s-video or a rbg to scart adapter)

and between there you need a dvi to vga adapter

 

the DVI port will not output sound... are you sure there isn't an S-video port on the back of the pc?

 

or HDMI output

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/79223

 

it will work but remember a TV resolution will lokk rubbish in comparison to a PC monitor.

does the PC have a Svideo output on graphics card? if so this may connect directly to the S video port on the TV?

 

also if its the one with the 8800 GPU it will work 1000%

Advanced Display Functionality

* Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560x1600
* Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
* Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output (Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080p resolution
* 10-bit display processing

S-Video will be the way to do it although your tv will prob only show VGA res max ? so will have to set desktop res to 640x480 before connectign then in the nvidia settings it should detetct a TV connected and the menu should be pretty straight forward to setup.

 

I will have to check .

Yes it has these on both the TV and PC.

 

Buy a proper plasma or LCD screen with VGA/DVI connections on - job done!!!

 

Then you should be able to use s-video to get video from the PC to the TV, quality will be ok for movies and stuff like that, but I wouldn't bother with surfing the internet.

What TV is it ???

 

If it has those on both, why are you trying to use a convertor in the first place?

 

Something to do with over-engineering stuff maybe

 

As for the sound, I presume your PC has a 3.5mm jack for line out (unless it has RCAs - one white, one red).

If it has RCAs then you'll need to run two RCA cables from PC to TV. If it's a 3.5mm jack, you can get adaptor leads with jack on one side and two rca females on the other ().

 

Because even with this connected via the relevent cable, I couldn't get a picture, so thought I must be doing something wrong or I needed to configure something in the computer?

Please be aware that you are dealing with a computer numpty . The PC Digital TV card has an S video, a yellow jack plug socket and an aeriel one. I have connected the aerial and tuned in the TV (using the monitor I have), I would just rather connect everything through the TV, as it is much better picture quality than my LCD monitor. I want to be able to do everything through the TV and don't want a seperate monitor in the living room.

The TV is a limited edition Sony one with a big glass panel on the front, so I don't want to get rid of it, as it was over £2k five years ago .

While we're at it, is there anyway I can save DVDs to the hard drive, so that they can be accessed like a library from the Windows Media Centre software? I tried yesterday and it saves the DVD as two seperate files (sound and video) that the Windows software doesn't seem to recognise. It has huge memory and I only want to save Caities DVDs on, as hunting for them is a right pain in the arse . I just want to be able to load them up and play them as and when required. At the moment it saves them so that you can just reburn them onto a DVD....

 

I suspect one of two things is happening. The computer needs to be configured as you suggest, or, using the TV card isn't going to work, as I believe the s-video connection on there is probably used so that you can connect a camcorder to the pc and do video capture, not play the PC on a TV.

Sounds like the second option to me, need to figure out what your VIDEO card has output-wise - a picture of the back of the PC would be useful at this point.
Something else you could do for us, is minimise all your windows, right click on the background, choose "properties", then select the "settings tab". Take a screen shot and post it here.

That's a bit like saying "My ford has a big turbo on it" !!! not exactly detailed is it... come on, you must have a model number or something !!!

[quote]While we're at it, is there anyway I can save DVDs to the hard drive, so that they can be accessed like a library from the Windows Media Centre software? [quote]
Can be done, you need some DVD ripping software though

 

i have feeling you are talking about connecting your tv to the same card that has the aerial connction to it?

if so this is probably an input to the PC not an output so you need to connect your TV Svideo to the PC's graphics card Svideo OUTPUT. on the 8800 card in the XPS system i belive it is inbetween the two DVI (white sockets) or at least next to them. if your pc does not have this you will need some sort ot DVI to Svideo or composite(yellow plug) cable.

sound will be dealt with as stated above by your sound card and will probably just be a small green headphone socket.

 

100% correct

Also if you have the monitor connected at the same time as the TV, you have to physically tell the computer which one to use, as FN+F5 doesn't switch between the two .

Finally figured it out to find we had no sound, but with a digging up an old lead from the collection, we finally managed to get this working as well - typically this also had to be enabled in the software - just plugging it in was insufficient .

Thanks for everyone's help . Now all I need is the software that will enable me to load the DVDs into the media centre? CDs isn't an issue, but DVDs seems to be . It does come with a program, but this seems to be aimed at copying DVDs to play, not at saving them to the hard drive for watching?

 

What you'll need to do is convert the DVD to a file format which Media Center understands.

That means ripping the DVD using software like DVD Decrypter and RipIt4Me (generates a config file for DVD Decrypter to use).
Then convert the VOB files that DVD Decrypter generates to wmv or mpeg. Not sure if AVI (DivX) is supported by MediaCenter.

PS: All the above is allegedly illegal

 

Where would one find such a program?

 

One would download it from the internet. It's free afaik.

 

or also a prog called poweriso this will enable you to rip the whole dvd to an image file and just play these as a normal dvd on virtual drives.

 

Ok i cant be arsed to read though all these replys so i hope im not repeating!
S-Video from laptop to TV
Stereo to RCA cable from laptop to TV (http://www.logicsupply.com/images/ph...AAudio_big.jpg)

That is the most common choice. A SCART adapter is going to be very hard to get, if it exists. Not a common connection as far as I am aware.."

 

"fair use wizard" is what you need - even a computer numpty can use it as you just start the program, insert the dvd and click a couple of buttons and it does it all for you

if you have trouble downloading a copy from anywhere, i can email you the setup file

 

Right, so you are sorted for the video connection from PC to the TV and also audio from PC to TV/amp right? And all you want is to copy the DVD's you own onto the harddrive of your PC to play in Media Centre right? If so, this is simple (and is actually legal to do so, provided you won't be sending the riped files over the net or burning the film to DVD to give/sell to someone else )

Get yourself a copy of this programme - DVDShrink

It's so easy to use and you can do three things with it. 1) copy an entire disc (film and all extra's), 2) copy only the feature film and 3) rip either of the above in uncompressed (ie, unchanged) or you can compress the files to save space

Everytime you rip a film, it saves the files together in a folder (you can specify where and the folder name at time of rip) in VTS/VOB format (this is the native format of DVD's). Media Centre should recognise these no problem, but I have never tried it myself, so there is a possibility you will need to "mount the image" (ie, fool the PC into thinking the film is actually a disk in a make belive drive) for it to play.

Should you want to convert the films you have ripped from DVD to AVI (DivX/XviD) you can use AutoGK - again piece of piss to use, converts DVD VTS/VOB files to one single AVI file, and you can compress to your choice of size (I go for 2gb files when compressing)