I bought a $29 adapter for connecting the VGA port on a system I have to the cable or s-video ports of my TV and both work fine. It has been a couple of years now but I was travelling and did not want to lug around a monitor. My PC was a multimedia box which has no expansion ports other than USB. It does have a composite video outlet as well as the standard VGA. I wanted to hook up my computer to the TV in my hotel rooms which only had the standard coax connector and this box allowed me to do that. It is not specific to the computer, it simply takes the signal and converts it to the media type.
I don't see any converters near the price I paid for mine. Granted I bought it a couple of years ago, it was not a popular item asn was soild mostly to connect the DVD players with their S-Video ports and composite ports to the cable port on a TV set. It worked pretty well and it seems I beat the wave on this one.
This unit looks very similar to mine except that mine is black and was $50.00 less.
http://www.tigerdirect.com
"The Ultimate 2000 is a pocketsize PC-to-TV converter recommended for professional presentations, computer gaming, and internet browsing on ..."
Here are some other sites to check out
http://www.greatcables.com
Converts PC VGA Signal to Minimum Flicker TV Signal Output
Composite Signal and S-Video (S-VHS or Hi-8) Output
24 bit True Color Operation
Non Interlaced VGA Output for Simultaneous Display on VGA Monitor
Switch Selection of NTSC or PAL TV Standard Output; Overscan and Underscan Mode and vertical position
Perfect for presentations from a notebook
Specifications
Function VC-1024
Connectors Input 1 x 15 pin HDB Female
Output 1 RCA Jack (Composite)
S-Video (S-VHS or Hi-8)
Video Output Composite 75 1Vp-p
Y/C (S-Video) 75 1Vp-p
RGB (SCART) 75 1Vp-p
Computer Signal Input 1024 x 768 (24 bit True Color)
Switches SW1 Video Mode NTSC (60 Hz/3.58 MHz)
PAL (50 Hz/4.43 MHz)
SW2 Overscan/Underscan
SW3 Vertical Position
Signal Adjustment 1 Brightness
1 Phase
1 Volume
Main Topics
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by: BradleyEEPosted on 2003-07-23 at 20:23:12ID: 8991818
I found a link that gives a description of the requirements of the conversion:
http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Ele
I'm not sure, but I think that the $5 converter makes a lot of assumptions about the capabilities of the video card. I.e., that the video card can produce the right horizontal and vertical scan rates for the TV without any additional hardware and that you can find Windows drivers that will set the video card to these settings. Only a video card with TVout will have the drivers (readily) available.
The more expensive one might do what you want, but I don't have the expertise in the area, nor do I feel like reading about the topic at the moment. If the eBay seller of $50 converter had good feedback (and possibly a return policy), then I might give that a try.
Bradley