"News" wrote in message
...

Son was delighted to receive a Pi yesterday, but we cannot seem to view
anything, using an ancient Sony portable TV. The only conventional PC
monitors we have use VGA.

The Pi has a yellow phono socket for video output. The TV has a
conventional TV aerial input, and a Scart socket. We don't have a lead
with Scart plug on one end, and three phono plugs on the other, but I did
find an adaptor thingy that is a Scart plug, with three phonos on the
back. No lead. I plugged that into the TV, and used an ordinary audio
lead, with phono plug on each end, to connect the adaptor to the Pi.
Nothing. Went right through the tuning band of the TV, but zilch. What am
I doing wrong or, more to the point, what else do I need to buy?

Have you turned on the Pi? (I'm not familiar with it, but I assume that even
with no OS, it will give some sort of display.)

Have you got an equally ancient VCR that might have composite input? Or
perhaps a DVD recorder. Then the output of that might be RF-RF on the TV,
or SCART-SCART.

The SCART-phono adaptors, might be designed for output only (it might say
so).

Or you could wire up directly, but will probably need to solder: central
core of the yellow plug to pin 20 of SCART, and screen to pin 17 (download
SCART pinouts from anywhere).

Using RF tuning on the TV won't help if the input is via SCART or composite,
it needs to be AV input. You might be better off with a more recent TV,
which you probably have in your living room. (And in that case, doesn't the
PI have HDMI output?)

--
Bartc