Helpdesk #02: Svideo on an Nvidia card

Setting up a TV as a secondary monitor on an Nvidia card is hell.

It didn't work in a plug and play fashion, does anything ever work right away though? One does wonder.

Step 01: Connect the cable.



This plug goes into the svideo plug on your pc.




This is the SCART that goes in your TV (unless you have an svideo plug in your TV) - Make sure it's set to input!

Then I ran the Television Setup Wizard in the Nvidia control panel, rebooted, and noticed it wasn't working. Troubleshooting time!

Step 02: Update to the latest drivers. This was v190.62 at the time of writing.

Reboot after the installation and BANG, the display settings are stuck on 800x600 reso and 4bit colour. Double-U, Tee, Eff.

Argh, my bad, I just installed them when the previous drivers were active. Uninstalled the drivers in Device Manager:



To be safe, I'd best get rid of the crap that the uninstaller didn't get rid of too... I used Driver Cleaner to get rid of all the Nvidia display driver remnants, rebooted & reinstalled the drivers.

Normally, I'd do this in safemode, but somehow, my pc instantly reboots itself as soon as it fully boots safe mode, haha!

Reboot again, just to be safe, and go back to the Nvidia Control Panel and ran the Television Setup Wizard again:





Choose "Run Television Setup Wizard"







Which brings you to this screen:



In case your TV still hasn't been found yet, choose:

Click "My display is not shown in the list".



Try the first option, "Rigorous Display Detection" first. This didn't find my tv at first either, but I chose to enable the television connection anyway.



Untick and Retick the "Force television detection" box and choose "Restart now". If you're in luck, the software will find your tv by the time you reboot.

Unfortunately, after trying all of the above, it still didn't work for me >.<

Here's how I solved it in the end:

I used the "Force television detection on startup" function, rebooted, and then I clicked the systemtray icon, went to "Nview Something" and selected dualview there.



I then dragged my Media Player Classic window onto the desktop extension on the tv, fullscreened it, and enjoyed my movie.

I think there must be a flaw in the driver or something, since if I click the nvidia icon again after this, it completely resets, and the nview option disappears from the menu.

What.The.Hell.

So basicly I have one chance to do this per reboot, but that's good enough for me ;)