RE: Display adapter for my XBOX...

["Keith Doxey" <ukha@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paul,

> To help keep myself sane, I thought I'd set myself up an XBOX in
> my room, both to play some games, watch some DVD's, and just to
> "tinker" with, - with XBMC and so on... (I have even packed
my
> soldering iron which is now ensonced in the drawer in my hotel room!)
>
> Unfortunately however, although the TV in the room has an unused
> SCART socket in the back, I don't appear to be making much
> headway with using it... :-(
>
> I've connected up the XBOX using the normal AV cable (i.e.
> composite video only). - I have an advanced (RGB) cable at home,
> but I can't get that until next week. (I assumed the hotel TV
> would be mere composite anyway), but I'm not getting the TV
> switching to the AV input. - Obviously there are a couple of
> possibilities...
>
> a) - The TV's SCART socket does not have auto-switching enabled,
> and so is not switching to the SCART input upon the appearence of
> the external signal...
>
> b) The SCART socket is not configured to accept a composite
> input, and thus is not "seeing" a signal being input from
the XBOX...
>

Does the SCART lead from the XBox actually perform switching when used on a
"normal TV" ?

If it does then you are probably stuffed from an auto-switching
perspective.
If it doesnt then you need a +12V feed (actually 9v from a PP3 would be
enough) connected to Pin8 of the SCART and the negative side connected to
one of the ground pins 4,5,9,13,17,18

http://www.gamesx.com/avpinouts/xbox.htm

Shows +12 on pin 20 of the Xbox connector but I dont know if this is
connected through to Pin8 of the SCART or not.

> One other slight problemmette is that the remote for the set has
> no button for selecting the AV input - I'm guessing the set has
> the IR command available in its command set, but the remote just
> doesn't have the button present... - but unfortunately it means I
> have no way to force the input selection...
>

We stayed at a PremierTravelInn in Bolton a couple of weeks ago and the
Philips HotelTV was programmed to switch to SCART on Channel 8 although
admittedly this hotel didnt have the option of some channels that would
appear as "Room Service 2" on the bill!


> ... But not a SINGLE USB based, Freeview TV receiver, *with* an
> auxilliary AV input...
>

Probably dont exist because a Freeview adapter works entirely in the
digital
domain so would have the need to incorporate an encoder chip whereas an
Analogue tuner would need and encoder.

If you were planning to use the Hotel TV aerial to feed such a card you
would also have a big problem. The aerial systems are not connected
directly
to TV aerial and also have bi-directional data comunicating with the hotels
TV system computer for billing etc.

Unplugging the aerial from the room TV could well bring up an alarm that
the
TV had been disconnected.

At UKHA2004 I had a Freeview adapter with me as one of my sources but found
that the Hotel aerial system didnt have any digital channels available on
it
so I had to make do with a "Check the Aerial" screen for my demo.

We did however discover one interesting "feature". Whilst my TV
was scanning
for channels on the aerial system (which were oviously different to my
local
TV transmitter) I discovered that the "premium" paid for channels
are
actually sent on VHF and as my TV's tuner scanned that and it picked up ALL
of them.

There did appear to be a slight fault with the signal though as not all
bits
of the image were there. On several of the channel all the young ladies
clothes appeared to be missing!

> Other thoughts that occurred to me were to try to get the IR
> codes for the set, and use a pronto to force select the right
> input

The worst you could do it totally screw up the settings for the TV, but as
its not your TV why worry :-)

Regards

Keith