s video to rca

May 30, 2007 8:28 AM

A friend bought me this monster cable to hook my ibook g4 up to my TV, but my tv has composite video. i haven't been able to locate a working converter-- anyone have any ideas?
posted by LizardOfDoom to technology (8 comments total)

You need an S-Video to RCA converter. Unless you mean component video, in which case you need a ~$150 converter.
posted by Skorgu at 8:50 AM on May 30, 2007

Where have you looked that you weren't able to find them? You should be able to find one at your favorite big-box electronics stores -- they're just little inch-long pass-through connectors with a single capacitor in them and shouldn't be more than a few bucks. Really common.
posted by mendel at 8:51 AM on May 30, 2007

I'm pretty sure any RadioShack store would have the S-Video to RCA converter Skorgu pointed out.
posted by junesix at 9:49 AM on May 30, 2007

Apple sells an adapter for about $20.
posted by kdern at 10:00 AM on May 30, 2007

If, as you say, your TV accepts composite video, you need one of these.
posted by buxtonbluecat at 11:48 AM on May 30, 2007

As others have said, what you need is an "S-Video to Composite" adapter.

At least in my area, they didn't have any in the local RadioShack stores (furthering my opinion that RS has become totally worthless).

I finally found one at my local MicroCenter for about $10, but if you don't have one of those, you may be stuck. Before I found it at Microcenter (no thanks to the employees there, they had no idea they had it, and it took some searching to find). I see you're in Chicago, and there's a Microcenter there, so that might be my first shot if I were you. Otherwise, you can just try calling around to various places -- the only other store in the Metro DC area that I found that carries them was a little hole-in-the-wall video place in the District.

If you're not in a hurry, you can order an adapter off of the internet, but unless you have some other cables-and-connectors type stuff to buy at the same time, it probably won't save you much.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:03 PM on May 30, 2007

Slightly offtopic, but Monster Cables are horribly overpriced. Shop around on the web, and you may save loads of money.
posted by theiconoclast31 at 1:30 PM on May 30, 2007

Converting svideo to composite is absurdly easy, so the price should be very very low. You can easily buy the parts for under $5, and it is only about 10 connections..
posted by Chuckles at 9:28 PM on May 30, 2007