Other than the connection, the remaining problem is software and settings. I don't know the capabilities of the Windows Media Player as I do not use it. I use PowerDVD which works quite well. You can go into the control panel settings for the video adapter and route output to the TV-out for the ThinkPad and anything that is on-screen is sent to the television. I don't see why that wouldn't work with WMP as well. Maybe someone else who has a ThinkPad can elaborate.

~ GaySatyr

Edited by - GaySatyr on 10/14/2003 7:46:27 PM

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Unfortunately, this means two things: first, since the video stream is not processed by the CPU, you can't take a screen capture of the video, since there's literally nothing there except a black box on the desktop--a mask where the video stream is displayed. Second, DirectX's video overlay only works on the primary display (i.e your laptop screen) and not cloned secondary displays (i.e. your TV via S-Video).

There are two possible workarounds. First, you can try fiddling with the Thinkpad's display output so that it treats the S-Video port as the primary display (leaving the laptop screen blank or not showing the overlaid video).

Or you can try turning off the video acceleration and overlay capability. I'm using Windows Media Player 9, and I can get to those settings by going to the Tools menu, then Options... then the Performance tab then clicking on the Advanced... button. You can try unchecking the various options there to see if you can get the video to display on your TV. However, if you do this, then you'll probably see jerky video since your laptop's processor will have to decode the video data that your graphics chip was taking care of.

Hope that helps,

- Saki [faqs]

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I have a Thinkpad T30 (1.8 Ghz P4, 1 GB RAM, WinXP Pro, yada, yada) and I can hook an S-Video cable between the T30 and a television with S-Video In and play a DVD using PowerDVD. I use this setup for demo DVD videos.

I'm basically using the T30 as a high-priced DVD player.

You need a fairly hefty CPU and a decent amount of RAM, otherwise the video playback is not smooth. The T30 works fine, but a Thinkpad T21 (800Mhz P3, 256, Win2k) chokes.

As one who edits video I can tell that you can never have too much CPU, RAM, or disk space :-)

BTW, why do you want to use a Thinkpad to play a DVD? Amazon has DVD players for $39. Buying a DVD player is cheaper than a good S-Video cable.

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