VCD window black/pink when playing on TV

[flrobert]

I have a GeForce FX 5200 Video Card connected to my TV through TV out. I can watch DVDs on both my monitor and TV but when it comes to play VCDs I see a pink or black screen. It's strange. The desktop shows up normally on the TV screen but nothing inside the VCD window whereas I see the content of the VCD on my computer monitor. I checked this up in the common problems section but didn't find any answer.

[mats.hogberg]

Do you use the same player when playing VCD as DVD?

/Mats

[flrobert]

I use sthvcd or Windows Media Player to play the VCDs and the results are the same. I use another program to play DVDs though, but that program doesn't read VCDs.
I first thought it may be a standard problem (NTSC/PAL). Some of my VCDs are captures of PAL/SECAM VHS tapes and the TV is NTSC. But I would imagine that what you see on the TV is just a copy of what you see on the monitor. Then I tried with VCDs that are captures of VHS tapes and it doesn't work as well. So I have no idea why it behaves this way. You could ask me why on earth I want to watch my VCDs on the TV if I can watch them on the computer screen or why I don't just buy a cheap VCD player? It's true but I am curious to find out what is the reason behind this problem. I played around with the settings of my Video Card but that doesn't help.
Another question. I have a NTSC Sony Video Cam that I plug into my multisystem VHS player, in order to make a VHS copy of my mini-DV tapes. I want to make a tape readable on a PAL/SECAM player. So I switch my VHS player to PAL and start recording. It writes NTSC on PAL on the player's screen. Do you think this means the tape has been recorded in PAL? I should check it on a PAL/SECAM player but since I live in the Philippines I have none around. Anyway I should probably start a new thread somewhere else in the forum.

[mats.hogberg]

I use another program to play DVDs though

That's probably the cause.
I'd suggest PowerDVD that i know plays VCD very well. There are also other players like VideoLAN. WMP is not a VCD player, and I suspect that you play the avseq.dat, not the VCD?
This doesn't explay why WMP output doesn't show when using TV Out, but I've heard similar stories in the past. If you intend to just play a movie on your computer, there's nothing gained in doing a VCD (but perhaps from ripping the VCD to mpg?).

/Mats

[flrobert]

You are right. I play the avseq.dat file with WMP. By the way I never quite understood why WMP does not recognize automatically the *.dat format as a media format. You always have to go in the option all files when you attempt to read the VCD. However when I use STHSVCD it still doesn't show up on the TV. That program is quite old though so I will download PowerDVD and try again. Thanks.

[mats.hogberg]

I never quite understood why WMP does not recognize automatically the *.dat format as a media format.

Well, that's because it is no media format. Actually a VCD player doesn't play the dat file (or any other file) at all - it accesses the sectors that the .dat occupies on the VCD directly. If I'm not wrong, the same goes for DVD and vob files.
To boot, a lot of applications uses .dat files, each for its own purpose, so to associate .dat with WMP doesn't make sense.

/Mats

[flrobert]

I used ASUSDVD XP and it works. I can now play both VCDs and DVDs on my computer screen and my TV screen. So it was indeed a software problem. Thanks for the hint.

Now I am facing another little pb. When I play my VCDs it automatically switches off the sound! I have to Open the Play Control Icon in XP and slide up manually the Play Control Volume and Wave/MP3 volume to hear the sound! How these computers behave strangely sometimes!!