Trying to get TV-OUT

I've been trying for a number of months now to get picture from my PC to a TV, and 5 cards, 8 cables, and countless drivers later, I am totally frustrated. I've come to the forums in the hope somebody knows something that can help..

I have about 3 PCs running in the house not counting things like XBMCs (They output to TV perfectly.) The MAIN Pc, a second PC called MEDIA1, and a new media pc (MEDIA2.)

In MAIN, I have tried the ATI Radeon Sapphire, a EAX ASUS 1600X PRO and now an NVIDIA 8500 GT, with various S-VIDEO, yellow-analog and proprietary cables, various drives, and cannot get a TV out.

In MEDIA1, I had an ATI RADEON 1600X and it actually COULD output to TV, but the Media PC became somebody's main PC as an XMAS present, so when MEDIA2's ATI ASUS EAX1600PRO card refused to output to TV, I transferred the ASUS EAX1600PRO into MEDIA2, and .. it wouldn't output to TV.

So I now have no PCs that output to TV, not anywhere in the whole house.

I have run driver-cleaner-pro, removed all the old drivers, and tried the latest ATI/NVIDIA drivers. I have removed all the drivers, and tried the exact driver combination that worked on MEDIA1: the 7.5 ATI drivers + 6.12 Catalyst, no TV (all of this with every cable known to man)

None of these TVs are new enough to be detectable as monitors by the cards, so where possible I have used the "force" option, but no joy. Note that I have had tv-out on all PCs before this fiasco, and they were never detected, either.
I am at my wit's end. Is output to TV simply impossible anymore?

Note that all my TVs, VCRs and media setups are analog-RCA, *NOT* HD. I have little doubt that in the expensive world of HD, all these cards work fine, but I'm not that rich.