I believe I have identified the problem. If I run xawtv -noxv I get colour using S-Video. Without the -noxv flag I get black and white S-Video. I'm running XF4.2.1 under Debian Sid and the Nvidia drivers (needed for opengl games and tv card). Maybe someone can help identify which pience of the software maze is causing the default output to not show colour? Then we can try to prevent others tearing their hair out like myself over this thing. Regards, James