Ubuntu – Output screen to TV set using S-video

s-videotvUbuntu

I'm trying to display pictures on the TV, to show them to friends and family. But when I join the TV and computer using a S-video cable, nothing happens.

In the "Display" option menu, no screen other than my computer's is shown, and the "detect" options doesn't do anything.

Looking online, I've found some forums suggesting I experiment with the xrandr command, so I did :

xrandr --output S-video --set load_detection 1
xrandr --output S-video --set tv_standard ntsc
xrandr --output S-video --right-of LVDS

And I manage to see part of my desktop on the TV, but in the wrong resolution.

I've played around with xrandr a little bit more, until I accidently changed my laptop screen resolution to 800×600, I had to change it back in /etc/X11/xorg.conf by hand 🙂

Any ideas? How could I use the TV as a big screen ? What exactly is xrandr ? Is this what I should use, or should the TV appear in the display options ?

EDIT : I've installed grandr, a GUI for xrandr (in the Ubuntu repositories it's called "Multiple monitors".

But only my laptop screen is in the list. I guess I have to edit the xorg.conf file to add the s-video/tv monitor ?

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Best Answer

Check what level of support your xserver-xorg- driver has for TV out. For example, check the "TV" section in the ubuntu manual page for the xserver-xorg-video-intel driver. It mentions the availability of integrated TV output and goes on to talk about the tweaks needed to get this working.

See if you can find a similar page for your driver on this site.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Setting VESA display mode > 800×600 in Ubuntu 9.04

Finally I got it. Its now working fine on 1280x1024.

I don't have to use the kernel boot parameter at all
xorg.conf is still in use, and the 'new' file monitors.xml seems to be neither written nor read by the system

The problem was a misconfiguration of my monitor. Without explicitly giving it a HorizSync the X.org estimated a valid range of 28-33kHz and thus only allowed the lower modes. The logfile /var/log/Xorg.0.log told me:

(II) VESA(0): Configured Monitor: Using hsync range of 31.50-37.90 kHz
(II) VESA(0): Configured Monitor: Using vrefresh range of 50.00-70.00 Hz
(WW) VESA(0): Unable to estimate virtual size
(II) VESA(0): Not using built-in mode "1280x1024" (hsync out of range)
(II) VESA(0): Not using built-in mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) VESA(0): Not using built-in mode "640x400" (hsync out of range)
(II) VESA(0): Not using built-in mode "320x400" (hsync out of range)
(II) VESA(0): Not using built-in mode "320x240" (illegal horizontal timings)
(II) VESA(0): Not using built-in mode "320x200" (illegal horizontal timings)

With a setting of 28-73kHz, I can now chose modes up to 1280x1024.

...
Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Configured Monitor"
        HorizSync       28-73
EndSection
...

My screen should support even higher modes, and because I only estimated the number 73 I might have to set it even higher. However, currently I know that this is not the reason for the restriction, because modes highter than 1280x1024 are not checked at all. I think I will be able to configure those as well, and I will come back and report the solution as soon as I have it.

Cast 4K video from 1080p PC to 4K smart TV

Different 4K TVs have different capabilities. I couldn't find any specs for yours, so I'll keep this general.

Video Direct Connection

Your PC graphics card and HDMI port (GTX 1070) handles 4K @60Hz (make sure the cable is high speed and you're using the card's own HDMI port). 4K output isn't common on general purpose laptops, but yours appears to have a 4K display and an HDMI 2.0 port, so it should output 4K video and the setup should be even simpler than on the PC.
On the laptop, you should get 4K output regardless of the multi-monitor settings because that's what it is supplying to the internal monitor.

On the PC, it appears that your main monitor is 1080p. Make sure you've selected a multi-monitor option that sends different content to the TV (extends rather than duplicates, otherwise, what you send will be limited to the resolution of the main monitor). If it sees the TV as an independent display rather than a duplicate of the main monitor, the config panel should show options higher than 1080p for it.
If the config panel shows a maximum of 1080p, that's the maximum that will be sent. The TV will scale it internally to 4K, which will look better than 1080p, but not as good as true 4K.
Of course the content needs to be 4K to get true 4K. Content less than 4K will get upscaled.

USB Drive

Some TVs will work with only flash drives, some will also work with hard drives formatted FAT32 and a single partition. Some will handle images but not videos on a USB drive. Try using a flash drive formatted FAT32 if what failed was a USB hard drive.

Casting

If you are having trouble getting a direct video connection to work, it may be easier to cast, and you can do it from either machine (the laptop or PC's video hardware doesn't come into play). There have been a number of casting apps and dongles for awhile, but Google Chromecast has simplified it to an easy setup and a mouse-click to cast.

If the TV has Chromecast built-in, you don't even need the Chromecast dongle (if you do need the dongle, get the newer Chromecast Ultra, which handles 4K; the non-Ultra version goes up to only 1080p).
For online content, you just need an extension for your browser. I understand it may even be built into current versions of Google Chrome. If you prefer not to use Chrome, there is a free open-source version of the extension in the Chrome Store that will work with Chromium (the open source code base for Chrome that doesn't include Google data mining), and Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi. From Add Extensions, search the store for Cast With MkChromecast.

After the extension is installed, you will get a Cast icon in your browser, and typically on the toolbar of the viewer. You use the viewer settings button to select the highest resolution format of the content and then click the cast button.
For video files stored on your computer that you want to stream directly, you need to install a streaming application that can output the Chromecast format. The free VLC version 3.0 contains that, and runs on all of the common OSes. There are also other apps. If you don't like VLC, do a Google search for other free apps and experiment.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Setting VESA display mode > 800×600 in Ubuntu 9.04

Cast 4K video from 1080p PC to 4K smart TV

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