TV-OUT on laptop causes major damage, fire / shock

[Thomas Bruno]

Just a note the hardware involved was:

Brand New Sony 27" flat screen TV from best buy

Dell Inspiron 8500
Video: Nvidia GeForce Ti4200 w/tvout
2.6ghz pentium 4-M

On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 05:25 -0600, Thomas Bruno wrote:
> Tonight, at roughly 10:30pm 12/02/04
> 
>  I proceeded to plug my tvout adapter into my laptop to watch a dvd on 
> my tv.  I had just been a video from the cam corder, so the tv ports 
> were ok and so was the rca cable.
> 
>   When I plugged it in, all I saw was a white flash. 3 of my friends in 
> the room say that the RCA cable melted, the tv smoked inside with lots 
> of white flashing inside of it, and the RCA cable was blown out of the 
> laptop TV-OUT connector.  I with a numb arm, awoke laying on the floor.
> 
>   Looking at the rca cable, I see bare wire sticking out of where it 
> melted about 2 inches melted at each end.
> 
>    I'm still in a state of panic/shock as to what just happened.  I will
> be researching legal options now, as my laptop warranty ended because 
> the dell wouldn't let me renew because of a mix up, and other things 
> that have built up (like sending it in for fan swap to have it come back
> not even turning it on),  now this.. a laptop I'm totally terrified of 
> even turning on.
> 
>   Update to the little story,  I got a junk VCR that I have, and tried 
> to plug the RCA tv out into it. it also proceeded to fry the vcr, and 
> new rca cable.  This is a problem with the laptop.
> 
> The thing has worked with the same tv in the past, only thing different
> is that the laptop and tv were plugged into the same powerstrip this
> time.
> 
> 
> 
> Anyone have any recommendations/experiences?
> 
> 
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