How to get S-Video port working on Pavillion laptop?

Hello,

I have just installed the 64 bit full version of Zorin 8 on a HP Pavillion dv8000. Almost everything is working very well but I can not determine how to get the s-video port to function.

I found some material about this online and attempted to follow some of the instructions on this PC with the free Zorin 8 install. I ended up with botched up video drivers and I would like to avoid having that happen again.

From what I've read online the s-video port can be somewhat sticky to get functional. If anyone in the forum has done this in Zorin or Ubuntu, please let me know how you did it.

Best regards,

Bill

Hi Bill,

what type of cable are you using and is it plugged into a TV per chance?. "S-Video to Scart"???.

Have you looked at the display settings after plugging the cable in: System Settings > Hardware > Screen Display and either "Mirror displays" and "Detect Displays".


What graphics card do you have?, if it is an Nvidia, look here:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2490

Let us know if this helps.

Regards Wolfman

Hello, I just spent the night in the ER for flu. Thanks for the reply, I'll get back to you as soon as I'm able. They sent me home with a temperature of 102 F!

Best,

Bill

Hi Bill,

"Gute Besserung" as they say in Germany!. (Get well soon )

Regards Wolfman

Danke sehr, Wolfman. This one doesn't want to let go, but at least I can eat some toast today. I'll be back in a day or so!

Best,
Bill

Hi, Wolfman,

I'm back on my feet again today. Wow, a 5 day flu.... hope noboby else gets it.

The video card in my HP Pavillion is a RS480M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200] according to lshw.

Oh, and the cable is S video on the computer end, RCA on the TV end.

On an unrelated topic... I just registered the 32 bit full version and will be registering at least one more copy of that and possibly another copy of the 64 bit version. Do I need to set up an additional support account for each machine or is this one good for all of them?

Thanks!

Best,
Bill

Hi Bill,

glad to hear you are feeling better!.

If you mean a seperate account for using the forum, no you don't, your forum username is good!.

With regards to the graphics, that model of ATI/AMD graphics is no longer supported by Linux, you must use the opensource drivers that install with the system, AMD only support graphic chip version 5000 upwards!.

Thanks, Wolfman.

Could you please give me some direction on how to set up the port with the included drivers? Also, I should mention that I tried the detect button with the TV attached. No joy (no surprise there... It's just an analog in video port on the TV). The mirror options are currently grayed out.

Best,

Bill

Hi Bill,

first you need to tell us what type of cable you are using, is it SPDIF to Scart, SPDIF to AVI, or is it SPDIF with a coaxial plug?. Is it an old analoge TV which you can manually tune?.

As for the drivers, you currently have the best drivers for that graphics already installed but you might want to install some DVB drivers for a TV app like "Me TV" if you are using an internal or USB TV card.

Open a terminal and paste the following command:

Code:

sudo apt-get install me-tv linux-firmware-nonfree

This will install the ME TV viewer app and the DVB packages and also firmware for DVB devices. You can also use "kaffeine" for TV viewing!.

Hi, Wolfman,

The cable has SPDIF on one end and a RCA male on the other. The TV is analogue, but I am going into one of the auxiliary inputs so the tuner is out of the circuit. It just has 3 female RCA jacks, yellow (video), red (right audio) and white (left audio) for each of the 4 aux inputs.

Hope this helps!

BTW, I just bought 2 Optiplex 755 machines and purchased registrations for them. These are available at a local computer salvage place for $75 and they have a stack of them. It runs great on the 755s, really snappy.

You'll be happy to know that the computer salvage place is building and selling Zorin machines, so your distro is getting out there!

Best,

Bill

Hi Bill,

connect the cable to the TV from the PC and switch it on, THEN switch on your PC, go to System Settings > Hardware > Displays > Mirror Displays, make sure that the TV is set to to your AVI channel, it might be AV1 but this depends on how many types of external connections your TV has, refer to the handbook if you still have it!. we call it "Input Source" here!.

Hello, Wolfman,

Sorry this thread fell through the cracks. I've been busy.

I incorrectly called my cable "SPDIF". Must have been the flu. It's actually NOT SPDIF, it's an S-Video cable. The laptop and TV both have female S-video jacks on them and I am running a male-male S-video cable between the two.

So, I believe that Zorin needs some way to detect the S-video port and create an option to send video out of it.

Hope this helps, sorry about my messed up nomenclature.

Best,

Bill

Hi Bill,

try reading here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolu ... nt_End_GUI

Install the package "arandr" and see if that helps, you will need to learn how to use it as I don't have a clue myself!.

Code:

sudo apt-get install arandr

What graphics card do you have?:

Let us know if this helps.

from lshw....

*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: RS480M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 5
bus info: pci@0000:01:05.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=radeon latency=66 mingnt=8
resources: irq:17 memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:9000(size=256) memory:b0100000-b010ffff memory:b0120000-b013ffff

I have installed arandr and am looking for the file to edit where I can add the s-video settings. When I first ran it from the command line, it reported that the s-video port was not active. Now when I run it, it launches a gui but I don't see any way to turn on the s-video port; it's grayed out. I will let you know what I find out.

Thank you!

Bill

Hi Bill,

check this page out and see what drivers might work with your card: RS480M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

Keep us posted because if you can get it working, it may help someone else with the same problem!.

Good luck!.