[wintermute115]

I have XBMC set up properly, and ready to go in the living room, but I can't get it to work properly with the TV...

It's attached to an NTSC-format TV via an S-video out that plugs into a composite input (Yellow video, red and white audio) on the TV. The BIOS messages and POST data comes up OK, followed by the Windows loading screen, with the moving bar. But after that, I just get a couple of flashes of what looks like the right data, but it doesn't persist for more than a cycle or two. When I reconnect it to a monitor, it's reset the resolution to 1024x768.

Does anyone know why I can't get this to work? Is there a particular combination of resolution or refresh rate I need to use? Am I missing something obvious?

It's not really feasible for me to have both the monitor and the TV attached at the same time, or this would probably be far easier for me to solve...

Thanks for the help.

[rernst]

I have XBMC set up properly, and ready to go in the living room, but I can't get it to work properly with the TV...

It's attached to an NTSC-format TV via an S-video out that plugs into a composite input (Yellow video, red and white audio) on the TV. The BIOS messages and POST data comes up OK, followed by the Windows loading screen, with the moving bar. But after that, I just get a couple of flashes of what looks like the right data, but it doesn't persist for more than a cycle or two. When I reconnect it to a monitor, it's reset the resolution to 1024x768.

Does anyone know why I can't get this to work? Is there a particular combination of resolution or refresh rate I need to use? Am I missing something obvious?

It's not really feasible for me to have both the monitor and the TV attached at the same time, or this would probably be far easier for me to solve...

Thanks for the help.

That should work. You should try with a low resolution. Start with 640x480 and then go up. Refresh rate should be 60Hz.

[TomJensen]

S-video max resolution is 1024x768. If you are using composite input (at the TV end), I highly doubt it can drive that res, may be 800x600. It's tough to run anything in that res any more. If the TV doesn't have S-video input, I'd look for a freebie on places like Craigslist (assuming you are in the US) from people who are upgrading to HDTVs.

[wintermute115]

I've dragged the monitor into the living room to try and set it up a two-display system and work from there; now I can at least change the resolution on the fly. It's set up as a clone view(both screens showing the same thing). I've tried every resolution from 640x480@4bits upwards and nothimg seems to work.

It does recognise that there are two monitors attached (Windows display properties calls one of them "default monitor" while nVidia's tool calls it "TV"), except in nVidia's "Television > Change the signal or HD format" menu, where it tells me that (for the only available connector, "auto-detect") "Warning: There is no television connected to the selected connector".

Changing resolution or other settings produces a flicker on the TV which looks like it's managing to properly display the screen, even if only briefly.

We'd been planning on getting an HDTV sooner or later, but I'd been hoping to wait until I'd paid off the hardware on the HTPC...

[wintermute115]

I've used the same cable to connect my laptop to the TV at 800x600 without any problems, so it's not the TV...