Member Avatar for innoazian

I have a HP dv4000 and I bought a s-video cable for it to hook to my television. It color goes in and out and it mainly stays black and white. Can anyone help? Please!?

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Dani AI

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: since correctly guessed a bad cable is a common cause, the next step is to isolate which part is failing. Typical symptom — a picture that stays black-and-white — means the chrominance (color) signal is missing while luminance (brightness) is present. S-Video carries those separately, so a broken wire or bad contact for the chroma line will produce a monochrome picture (S-Video explanation).

Try these checks in order:

  • Verify the TV input selection is the actual S-Video input (not a composite/RCA jack that looks similar). Do not rely on cheap S-Video<>RCA adapters; some adapters only pass luminance.
  • Inspect both cable ends and the laptop jack for bent pins, dirt, or corrosion. Wiggle the cable gently while watching the TV — if color appears/flickers, the cable or connector is faulty.
  • Test the same cable and TV input with a known-good S-Video source (DVD player). Also try the laptop+cable on a different TV. That tells you whether the cable, the TV input, or the laptop S-Video output is at fault.
  • On the laptop side, make sure TV-out is actually enabled (use the external-display toggle or the graphics control panel). Boot to the BIOS/POST screen and check whether the external output shows color before Windows loads — if it is B/W even there, the hardware/output stage is suspect.
  • Update or reinstall the laptop video drivers and, in the graphics control panel, try different TV formats (NTSC/PAL) and lower interlaced resolutions (480i/576i). Driver settings can sometimes affect TV chroma output.

If all tests still give monochrome, the chroma circuit or the S-Video jack on the dv4000 is likely faulty and requires repair. As a workaround, a USB video-out adapter or an external VGA-to-TV converter will provide color without using the laptop S-Video jack.

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Member Avatar for mesamb1

That is easly and probably could be just a faulty cord

Member Avatar for innoazian

I thought that was the problem as well so I went out and bought a new cord but it has no color at all.

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