Videos won't play on S-Video out on a Radeon?

[FlyingPenguin]

Okay, I hardly ever use S-Video out anymore but I downloaded a bunch of original series Star Treks and wanted to watch them without burning them on DVD.

I haven't used s-video out since I had a Geforce3.

Running a Radeon 9800XT and I can get S-video to work just fine (I'm impressed - it even displays at my full desktop resolution of 1280x1024!).

But when I play a video I see nothing but a black window on s-video, although I can see it just fine on the CRT - same thing happens in fullscreen.

I figured it was some sort of digital rights management crap in WMP so I fired up the Divx Player and had the same problem.

WTF? Anyone know what I'm doing wrong here?

Thanks

[FlyingPenguin]

Well I can make it work if the TV is the only display enabled, but not if I have both the CRT & and TV on. I found an article that mentions Overlay mode only works on one display at a time but that there's a way to get around that with some loss of quality.

The TV is in another room so I'd like to be able to watch it on both the CRT and the TV so I can cue it up and control it in the computer room while watching it in the bedroom.

GRRRR. Any help appreciated.

[ShibasScotch]

got a solution for ya. On the last ati that I had to make work with svid out, there was some checkbox about vid overlay somewhere in the advanced display properties. I wish I could remember, but hey, you could always go there and check every box you see My case was the same, it was outputting fine on the screen, until i played a video, and the window that the video was in was just blank. It is however, a slight loss of quality, most likely you wont notice it.

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

But reboot with the S-Video hooked up and you should see the boot up on both screens.. This is what I had to do to get it to work with my old Saphire9000.. But I haven't done that in a while. But I had the same problem and found that rebooting with the TV hooked up fixed the problem.. GL!

[BillyGoat]

be sure to check theater mode- we watch movies on our 64inch tv all the time off my 9800 with both the tv and monitor enabled

[ShibasScotch]

yea maybe that was the check box, theater mode, i dont remember, all i know is there is a check somewhere

ya know, I am a GF man

[FlyingPenguin]

F@K! This is awkward as hell. I thought the GeForce was bad.

In order to make it work I have to do ALL this:

- Disable multimonitor (I use 2 monitors)
- Switch to 1024x768
- Enable the TV display
- Change the TV display to "Primary" instead of "Clone" (this allows the TV and the monitor to work at the same time)

4 awkward steps!

I thought I could just setup a Scheme and bind it to a hotkey BUT I can ONLY do that for single monitor, with TV. The scheme configuration is grayed out when in dual monitor mode.

TOTALLY USELESS!!!!!

At least for the Geforce you could download TVTool and get one button TV out.

[FlyingPenguin]

I found a slightly less annoying way of doing it, but it still sucks that I can't make a scheme and bind it to a key

I can leave it in dual monitor.

- Bring up display properties and change 2nd display to 1024x768
- Cue up my video on the 2nd display in full screen mode
- Change 2nd display to TV.

Only hassle with this is I can't see the image on both the 2nd CRT and the TV at the same time.

There HAS to be a better way.

[Busby]

Send me your flat panel(s) and I can test it on my R9700 Pro

In all seriousness, I did a search on Rage3D forums and found an interesting post:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread. ... d=33762839 (Deals with 9500 but i'm sure 9800 would be similar)

And also this link: http://www.squeakfix.co.uk/fixes/tv.html

I found 225 posts when I searched for svideo and most dealt with TV out so you might check the Rage3d forums for more help.

[FlyingPenguin]

The root of the problem seems to be that ATI really only designed TV out to work with single display configurations - that's the only way you get the schemes menu enabled.

Then you can bind bind it to a single hotkey.

When you do it under dual monitor you're basically just telling Windows to use the s-video out as the 2nd monitor.

Again it would be acceptable either way if I could have a hotkey to go to my normal dual monitor config and then another for TV out. It's awkward to have to go through all the clicks to switch it manually each time.

[The_Frapster]

Oh quit your bitching at least it works ;D

Just kidding though. Maybe a tv out card would be more help? Since it's a dedicated card and all it might not present as many problems? Also, they should be had for hella cheap.

[grumpy 1]

what program are you using to veiw the videos fp

[FlyingPenguin]

Doesn't matter what I use. I've use WMP, Divx player... these are Divx TV shows.

[BaD_HeX]

From a quick glance I am guessing that it has to do with the overlay mode most players play in. Basically if you try to stream a video over a VNC server or anything that doesn't directly hook the video you get a black/pink box where the movie should be playing. If you try out BSPlayer there are some options for alternate output of video which do not use the overlay crap. It's under options/prefs, then video/video rendering. By changing the mode I am able to even stream videos using microcrap's remote desktop. I would only assume that it would function for svideo output.

[FlyingPenguin]

I'll try that player. Thanks.


I have a seperate but related issue. I need to purchase a video card for a client who wants to connect it to both a monitor and an S-Video TV. He needs both to be on at the same time all the time. Doesn't want to spend more than $100 - $120.

He's a gamer, but everything he plays right now works on his Geforce2MX. He mostly plays Golfing games, and a Nascar game. Nothing cutting edge.

I want to get a Radeon dual head because I know it can do both displays at the same time.

What do you guys recommend? A Radeon 9600 or 9600SE?