# Vga

## mooghle

What is a VGA to S-Video adapter for? I just bought one of these cables the other day cause I wanted to hook up my laptop to my LCD tv. The reason I bought that instead of a regular VGA cable is because my laptop has a VGA connection but my tv doesn't but this cable didn't work for any of my tvs so what is it for?

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## sebaro

Your pc video card may have three connectors: D-Sub, DVI or HDMI. See Wikipedia for each.

Probably your card has D-Sub as you call it VGA.

Now, you have to check what type of video connectors does your tv set support. If it is new (HD-Ready, FullHD), it should have HDMI. Then you will need to buy an D-Sub - HDMI adaptor/cable.

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## Jaglover

VGA to S-Video sounds like a sensible thing if your TV has S-Video input. Both are analog with discrete colors IIRC, thus fairly similar. Converting VGA to HDMI is going to be expensive, it requires a special box for conversion to digital.

So I'd concentrate on this "but this cable didn't work for any of my tvs so what is it for?" thing.

Are you sure your VGA output was actually active when you tried it? Did you load Xorg while TV was connected? Did you try booting with TV connected? AFAIK most chipsets disable VGA output if nothing is connected to it during initialization.

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## Monkeh

Your GPU may not support S-Video or Composite output over VGA. If it does not, you're out of luck without a scan converter, which is not a particularly cheap device.

 *sebaro wrote:*   

> Your pc video card may have three connectors: D-Sub, DVI or HDMI. See Wikipedia for each.
> 
> Probably your card has D-Sub as you call it VGA.
> 
> Now, you have to check what type of video connectors does your tv set support. If it is new (HD-Ready, FullHD), it should have HDMI. Then you will need to buy an D-Sub - HDMI adaptor/cable.

 

Actually, there are many other common connectors on GPUs. And it is not 'D-Sub'. It is VGA. If you want to call it a D-Sub, what do you call serial and parallel? 'Those other D-Subs'?

There is no such thing as a VGA to HDMI cable. They are completely incompatible. Devices are probably available to reencode to a digital signal, but will be expensive, bulky, require an external power source, and generally not worth the bother..

 *Jaglover wrote:*   

> Both are analog with discrete colors IIRC, thus fairly similar.

 

Actually, they're very different. VGA is RGB, S-Video is CY (colour and intensity, not discrete colours). Specific support is required from the GPU to use S-Video or Composite. Most dedicated cards come with seperate ports.

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