Customer Reviews

Apple Mini-dvi To Video Adapter

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Reviews are only good if you can learn something from them, so here's what I did with this adapter. Hopefully it'll help you figure out if it's right for you.

It took awhile to figure out which adapter I needed, and then it took awhile to get the right one, but this is it. I wanted to connect a 1.5 GHz Powerbook 12" (aluminum) to a Sony Wega 27" flat-tube TV and watch videos. At first, I though all I would need was a mini-DVI-to-component, and then I learned the difference between "component" and "composite." Didn't matter though, because what I actually needed was this, the mini-DVI-to-Video adapter. (For an iBook G4, I think you'll need mini-VGA-to-video.)

The "Video" stands for S-Video, and any generic S-Video cable will hook up to it. You don't need an expensive Monster cable for this job.

The video quality ranges from acceptable to great. Even though you can see the lines of pixels on such a big TV when you're looking at the desktop, videos recorded at DVD-quality *look* like DVD-quality. Videos (by which I mean legally-acquired TV episodes) encoded at less than DVD-quality look pixelated if they were originally digital broadcasts, for some reason, so while The Invisible Man (new) looks crisp, new Battlestar Galactica looks... chunky. From this, we conclude that that adapter itself works just fine, and it's up to your original file quality to determine how good it will look on the TV.

That said, the screen resolution is 800x600 while the adapter is plugged in, so I wouldn't recommend routing video from a 12" PB to a larger TV than 27" unless you don't mind a little fuzziness.

The adapter also comes with a composite jack, but I haven't used it, so someone else will have to review that aspect. :-)

If you were looking for a way to watch movies from your macbook on your TV, this adapter is a must buy. If your TV is more modern and has a DVI port, go with the mini-DVI to DVI adapter instead. Also, don't forget to purchase a mini-plug to RCA cord so you can connect the audio from your laptop to the TV .

It works fine, but it gets really annoying when you're using it with a widescreen Mac and a widescreen TV. The zoom function most plasmas and LCD TVs have is 16:9 aspect ratio, whereas Macs are at 16:10 aspect ratio, so you can either cut off the top and bottom of what you're trying to display, or have massive letter-boxing. After three months, I still haven't had any glitches that were this adapter's fault.

If you have HDMI or DVI on your TV or projector, don't bother with this. Go straight to DVI with a Mini-dvi to DVI adapter, then get a DVI to DVI cord or a DVI to HDMI cord.

I use this on my MacBook. Works flawlessly to hookup a TV via svideo. OSX handles this supremely well by remembering any video settings that I use when i have it hooked up. Plug it in and video switches to tv settings, unplug it and its back to normal. I use this with dual view mode so that my desktop stays the same always on the macbook, and i just get extra desktop space when I plug the tv in.
The quality is quite suprising for s-video, very good.
100% must have for anyone that has a nice tv :)

The high review is due to the fact this device does work, but not with new mac's. The new macbooks and mb pros do not put out s-video or composite video. if you want to hook this up to a tv, buy a vga adapter and a male to male vga cord. Also, new mb's and mb pros support HDMI, but apparently, you don't get audio.

I tried trouble shooting with my macbook for a long time to see why it wasn't working, then took it to an apple store, where genius' troubleshot for 45 minutes, then looked up the specks on new macbooks to see that they do not throw out s-video or composite video.

Like most Apple products, this adapter just works, plain and simple. Plug it into your Mini DVI port and grab your S-Video or RCA Video cable and plug one end into the adapter and the other into your TV or VCR and you will have your computer screen on the TV. We have used this adapter to watch movies and TV from the built in Front Row on our Macbook as well as from Hulu and Fox On Demand in full screen. Definitely worth the few dollars the adapter costs. There is no configuration settings with the adapter that you need to tune up. I've used other non Apple laptops as well as converters on a PC and it was terrible trying to get it setup and get the resolution correct so it would look good on the TV. With the Apple adapter you just plug it into the port on your Mac and the resolution instantly adjusts. Perfection.

This adapter is $19 at the Apple Store (add tax and shipping depending on how you buy it). From the online Apple Store:

" The Apple Mini-DVI to Video adapter is designed for use with the iMac (Intel Core Duo), MacBook, and 12-inch PowerBook G4. The adapter connects to the Mini-DVI port on these computers and provides both S-video and Composite video connectors so that you can view your computer on devices such as TVs, VCRs, or overhead projectors with S-Video or RCA (Composite) connectors. Video cables sold separately. "

Also note that you need an audio cable if you want sound out. For most TVs you would need a 3.5 mm stereo (headphone) plug for the Mac to two RCA plugs for the TV.

For an even better picture a lot of newer TVs can use an HDMI video input, which is digital. For this you would need Apple's Mini-DVI to DVI adapter, plus a DVI to HDMI cable. DVI to HDMI would essentially turn your TV into a computer monitor. You'd still need a separate audio cable. (HDMI cables can carry audio, but DVI cables don't.) Apple's Mini-DVI to DVI adapter is also $19.

I use it all the time, and it works exactly as expected. Completely user friends. Just plug it in and it auto-adjusts your resolution, or you can switch display modes to use multiple monitors. It's perfect for displaying images, or watching movies on a standard TV.

Works flawlessly - you plug it an, and OS X automatically adjusts your screen resolution so the picture will work on a TV. When you're finished, just unplug it, and your resolution will flip back. S-video may not be the greatest connection out there, but it works fine. Watching streaming video via Hulu is way better on a 32-inch screen than trying to huddle around a 13-inch MacBook; the picture even has the correct aspect ratio for my 4:3 TV screen. It gets even better when you pair it with this 6ft Toslink to Mini Toslink Cable to handle output to your audio receiver (plugs into the MacBook's headphone jack). Only complaint is that the connector requires a bit more force than you'd expect to insert and remove.

This is a great product and easy to use, all I had to do was plug it into the back of my iMac and plug an s-video cable into the adapter and into the s-video connection in the back of my old RCA Home Theatre TV and now I can play Movies directly to my TV, along with Internet TV, Instant Netflix movies, UTube videos and anything else that I can play on my computer I can now watch on my TV screen. I turn my TV channel to Input 90 (s-video) then mute the sound from the TV and turn up the sound on my computer. Works very well for what I want to do, and very inexpensive.