Ooh, Get You With Your S-video Output

I bought a laptop with a DVD drive and S-video output, thinking to use it, among other things, to play DVDs on my TV. The S-video output worked fine until I tried to play DVDs, when it switched back to the laptop's monitor. So I called tech support.

Tech Support: "It's not supposed to work, because the resolution would degrade too much."

Customer: "But this is DVD; they're designed for TV sets."

Tech Support: "No. You see, it looks really great on your computer monitor, but the TV doesn't have as good resolution."

Customer: "But DVDs aren't SUPPOSED to use all that resolution. They're supposed to be shown on TV sets. Anyway, do you have a solution for me?"

Tech Support: "Well, if you'd get an HDTV, it would work fine!"

As it turns out, he was right about one thing it wasn't supposed to work. Buried in the documentation of the MPEG decoder is a line that the card didn't support interlaced displays.