NVidia TV out in black and white!

[vehemence]

just got a new card for my media machine in the living room, replaced the mx440 with a fx5200 was all working fine, til it came time to test the tv out. at first i couldn't make it display anything (at least not once windows was loaded), but then i figured out i needed to select the right kind of output.

so once i selected composite, it came up on the screen, but for some reason in black and white. i've tried a few different PAL settings (even went as far as to look on the back of the TV to find out the right one, I/PAL), but even with the correct one for my tv it's still in black and white. i checked the nvidia "knowledgebase" thingy, but all it said was to do what i did to get the black and white signal in the first place, or that the cable was too long (which it isn't cause it was fine with the mx440s tv out).

i remember figuring out how to get colours before, but it was a long time ago and i can't remember what i did. any suggestions would be appreciated so i don't end up smashing it with a hammer!

[LT. Columbo]

are you 100% sure this is the right card, i have seen this when NTSC and PAL components are mixed....

"any suggestions would be appreciated so i don't end up smashing it with a hammer!"

i don't care who you are, that's funny right there

[vehemence]

uh, pretty sure. i mean, video cards can do NTSC and PAL right? or there wouldn't be much point giving me options to choose between them...

shall investigate further tho, kinda assumed it would work like my mx440 since they have the same chipset/driver set and stuff. cheers columbo.

[clink]

How have you got it connected to the tv. Is it Svideo to scart. If so, have you tried switching between the av channels on the tv.

[vehemence]

tis s-video to scart, should be the right channel tho, 's plugged into the scart socket i got the channel set to display. will try the different av modes tho, see what happens. cheers.

[anonymez]

got the latest nvidia drivers?

[cynthia]

Haven't connected my computer to the TV for a long time. Also my memory is not very good.

There are some setting you need to change.

In the Nvidia menu select TV format you should select 'advanced' and there are the settings for the tv-format (PAL-B) and also the setting for the videoformat. (Either komposit or S-Video - can't remember which one that gives you the color).

[vehemence]

yeah, i did the advanced settings thing, tried svhs and composite, but can only get a b&w signal from the svhs, and no signal at all from the composite even when i switch the tv to it's composite av mode. i also tried going through all the different PAL settings last night (took quite a while) none of them made any difference. tried some NTSC modes, but they didn't help, just made things worse.

got the latest nvidia drivers (77.77 i think), tho i guess i might try uninstalling them and try and figure out which old ones i had on there before (or just try all the old ones i've got). don't think it's a driver issue tho

anyways, hopefully someone somewhere knows something that can help! i miss my cartoons

[vehemence]

fixed it using a solution i found on a random forum somewhere (can't remember which one), which is to wrap a little wire around the top 2 connectors (with the plastic plug bit at the bottom) on the svhs cable, joining them together. apparently this is the difference between svhs and composite or something. pretty dodgy, but it works ok now so i'm gonna leave it alone. now i can play dawn of war on my tv! yay!

[thomas_matthew]

guys, guys, guys,

i know this problem pretty well.
this is...in a sense...an nvidia driver problem.

the problem is that tv out only comes in black and white.
the issue here is that the nvidia driver defaults the saturation level on tv out
for some reason, to zero.

if you play around enough in the nvidia control panel, you will find where the saturation level is set to zero. it has nothing to do with the wrong hardware, or tinfoil on the cables, or whatever.

although, for the life of me, i can't remember exactly where this setting is changed.
the stupid "nview desktop manager" has a lot of different screens in it.

keep looking, you will find where to adjust it

if i find it, i'll post the exact answer.

[thomas_matthew]

ok, i found it.
right-click the nvidia icon, select TV OUTPUT and then slide saturation to the middle.
does that work?

also, see this other guy's answer:
For some reason, a certain setting changes when you install the most recent update of Nvidia drivers. Mine happend to be version "66.93_win2kxp_english.exe". First, open your Display Properties and click on the [Settings] tab. Click the [Advanced] button. Click on the [GeForce (etc.)] tab. Select from the side menu [nView Display Settings]. Right click the display that should be your TV (normaly either "2" or "1b" ). Highlight [Select TV Format]. Click [Advanced...] at the bottom of the menu. Change "Video output format:" from [Auto-select] to the apropriate connector. Click [Device Adjustments]. Move the "Saturation" slider or just click [Restore Defaults]. Hopfully this should solve the problem.

[Marttila]

I am currently building a new computer and have experienced exactly the same problem that vehemence described in his first post. The only difference is that I have a Gainward GeForce 6600GT with VIVO. I know that the problem has to do with NVidia's drivers, since I can get colour S-video output when using the Windows XP default display driver (using which unfortunately causes other problems, so using it is not really a viable fox for the problem).

Even with the NVidia drivers I get colour up to the point Windows loads the display driver, when the TV goes black for a second or so and comes back with the desktop in black and white. I have gone through all the settings in the NVidia drivers (at least I think so, since the interface is somewhat hard to navigate) and tried all solutions that I have found for this problem: setting the video output format (I'm in Finland, so either PAL-B or PAL-G should work), switching the output from Auto to S-Video to Composite and adjusting the saturation value. Nothing so far has helped.

The latest thing that popped into my mind was, whether the fact that the card is a VIVO model has something to do with this. I *think* I installed the WDM drivers along with the ForceWare drivers but I will have to check this when I get home from work. Could it be that the drivers are sending the signal to the wrong pins on the 9-pin connector, and the S-Video out ends up getting only the luminance info?

I'm getting really pissed with the NVidia drivers, since I chose this card to interface my HT system to my computer (and to enable me to transfer some old home videos and music videos to digital format), but the black and white problem makes it totally useless for this purpose. I haven't even got to tryng the video capture side yet, but I can only imagine the amount of problems *that* will cause when even simple output doesn't work...

If anyone has any ideas about how this could be fixed (or whether it is a problem that will require a driver fix from NVidia), I would be extremely glad to hear.

-Ville Marttila

[nem2k2]

I have the same problem, with a Leadtek 6600GT - color is fine until the WinXP login screen appears. Has anyone found a solution for this yet?

[Metalfyre]

Aaarggh!!

I have the same problem. I got an XFX GeForce 6600 PCI-e passive graphics card (Bios version 5.43.02.64.02) with the latest nVidia drivers ForceWare 81.98 TV Encoder type integrated on WinXP SP1 and latest DirectX version 9.0c I allready fiddled with the saturation. No luck. Tried with TVTool (latest version).. same problem. I tried composite (which worked with my older GeForce2 MMX card although I used s-video out), no avail. Tried all PAL/NTSC settings. No luck. Tried setting it to s-video instead of automatic. No luck. I have a 7 pins output where a cable goes to 5 pins, then an extension cable 5 pins to 5 pins which in turn connects to a scart into my tv (Sony). I tried everything, every solution mentioned (also on nvidia forums I have posted this) but still no luck so far. I dunno what to do anymore I really hope someone will post a solution that will finally work.

[grce]

No luck yet

I have connected the S-Video on GeForce FX5200 to tv via RCA.
Tried every setting I could find and still no luck.
On the NVidia I can't find the option of selecting either S-Video or Composite video out.
My tv region is I/PAL and making all the correct settings maes no difference.

Help me please.

My solution is to play VCD's on my pc to the tv, as the DVD player I have won't play this format.