X on TV

From the Xserver's point of view a TV with a RGB SCART input is nothing but a fixed sync monitor with a rather low picture quality. This means that you can make a TV compatible signal with a plain vanilla cheapo VGA card.

Modelines

For the european 625 line (575 visible lines) TV standard a modeline looks like this:
Modeline "736x575i" 14.16 736 760 824 904 575 580 585 625 interlace -hsync -vsync
Officially the horizontal resolution is 767 (4 / 3 * 575) pixels with a clock of 14.76 MHz. However, since the clock used is 14.16 MHz, I reduced the horizontal values proportional to 14.16 / 14.76 (and rounded them to the nearest multiple of 8).
14.16 MHz / 904 yields a horizontal deflection frequency of 15.664 kHz, which should work on most EU (15.625 kHz) (and US, 15.75 kHz) TV's.

You can probably use the following modeline for the US 525 line (485 visible lines) standard:
Modeline "736x485i" 14.16 736 760 824 904 485 491 496 525 interlace -hsync -vsync

If you want to make a 640x480 screen with a black border you can you use this line:
Modeline "640x480i" 14.16 640 712 776 904 480 532 537 625 interlace -hsync -vsync
You can centre it by altering the 2nd and 3rd horizontal and vertical values (this example shifts the picture to the left):
Modeline "640x480i" 14.16 640 728 792 904 480 532 537 625 interlace -hsync -vsync

You can make a non interlaced signal with this modeline:
Modeline "736x288" 14.16 736 760 824 904 288 290 292 312 -hsync -vsync

Hardware

The VGA RGB signals are compatible with the SCART bus, the sync signals are not. You have to create a composite sync signal of 0.3 ... 0.5 Vpp. The circuit below acts both as a AND gate and a level translator. It doesn't need a power supply and can be mounted inside a VGA plug:

 -VS ------------------------+
                             |
                             |
                         |  /
       +-----+           |/
 -HS --+ 3k3 +-----*-----|     BC 548 B
       +-----+     |     |\
                   |     |  \|
                   |        -|     +-----+
                   |         *-----+ 68  +----- -CS 0.3 Vpp
                   |         |     +-----+
                  +++       +++
                  | |       | |
                  | |       | |
                  +++       +++
                   |         |
 GND --------------*---------*----------------- GND
                  1k2       820

You can use any general purpose low frequent low power Si NPN transistor instead of the BC 548 B
The resistors are all standard 250 mW carbon film resistors;
68 = 68 Ohm
820 = 820 Ohm
1k2 = 1200 Ohm
3k3 = 3300 Ohm
VGA and other hardware connections

The usual disclamers apply.