Netflix and VGA hack

[Jimb50]

I've been running Sage for a couple of years now and an quite satisfied. I recently switched from Blockbuster On-Line to Netflix and was looking into their "Watch Instantly" option. I hadn't planned on running it under Sage but found I can't run it at all on my HTPC. My only option for video out to TV is S-Video. Netflix requires VGA output. Running with both TV with S-Video and an LCD monitor with VGA out works, but I don't want a computer monitor in the TV room. I'm wondering if I can fool Netflix into thinking I have a VGA monitor attached. I found a site www.tvtool.info that made up a dummy VGA plug to do this They jumped the red, green and blue pin outs to the red, green and blue grounds with three 75 Ohm resistors between. I'm no electrical engineer and don't know if this will work or blow-up my VGA card. I'm sure there must be some EE's on this forum that can give me some advise.
Thanks in advance.
Jim B

[jrog]

There should be no issue in making a dongle like that.

Basically, you are terminating the signals with 75 Ohm impedance, which matches the impedance of a cable hooked up to a monitor. There's no guarantee that something as simple as that will work for every video card, I run into issues on my Macbook Pro where if I don't have a proper EDID signal, the computer will not turn on the video output.

I'm an EE and I work with Video almost day in and day out. I wouldn't worry about damaging anything with the dongle.

[Jimb50]

Just a note to let everyone know that the dummy plug seems to do the job. I ended up with 100 Ohm resistors instead of 75 (that's what Radio Shack had), but it doesn't seem to make any difference. My Nvidia card now thinks I have a monitor and TV hooked up and so does Netflix. Special thanks to jrog for his help.
Jimb50

[SWKerr]

I was able to get mine to work by just using an older Nvidia driver.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I was able to get mine to work by just using an older Nvidia driver.

That's interesting. What card do you have and what video driver are you using? I have a 6600GT and would love to get 'watch now' working on my HTPC.

[SWKerr]

The card is a GeForce 7300 GT. Driver is 6.14 dated 10/4/2007. Windows XP MCE service pack 3. I run it via a component cables to a Onkio receiver and then to a 42" Plasma.

I had everything working fine until one day I noticed it returning an error. Called NetFlix, who could actually tell what kind of connection I was using from the error on their end. (Component) They said it should work but they were having problems with Nvidia drivers. They recommended reducing the resolution but that would not fix it. Deleted a bunch of DRM files and still nothing. They then said to try to hook up a VGA monitor but I didn't want it that bad.

Finally I just thought hey it worked before why not now. Google research indicated something about older drivers working so I rolled back the driver to the one I still had on the hard drive from the original install and everything worked again.

Not sure if the DRM stuff was not in the earlier driver or if the newer ones just had an error but since I was not having any issues there was no need for the newer drivers.

[Mitch G]

FWIW, I've been using a dongle like this for a while now and it works fine.
(For me, it was easier than messing around with finding an older driver that did the trick.)


Mitch

[Naylia]

If your video card ends up needing a proper EDID to enable the video card, then you can use the DVI Detective to solve that problem. It stores the EDID and continues to broadcast it whether a display is attached or not. Just connect it to any other monitor to load an EDID to it. Runs you about $65.

http://sewelldirect.com/gefendvidetective.asp

[jrog]

I'm using this on my laptop right now http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

[reggie14]

I've been trying out the Silverlight player beta, and I no longer need to have a VGA monitor connected to play things back on my TV. I think it works pretty well, although it's not as feature-rich as the player Netflix demoed a couple years ago (but never released).

[naburleson]

I was using a older system with outdated drivers and couldn't get "Watch Now" to work, so when I called netflix tech support they told me that the issue was with the video drivers or card. He said they had found that if the drivers are older than I think it was Jan 2007 then it wouldn't work, and as far as getting "Watch Now" to work with S-video I have it working in my setup, but its going into a SD TV.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by naburleson

and as far as getting "Watch Now" to work with S-video I have it working in my setup, but its going into a SD TV.

I've heard that s-video out always worked with ATI cards, but stopped working with nVidia cards after some driver and DRM updates a year or so ago.