I’ve a confession to make: I don’t actually have a cable connection. For obvious reasons, I’ve eschewed television altogether. What few shows I actually do watch, I can legally view online. Why bother paying an extra thirty to one hundred a month for something I’m not actually going to use, right?
But I digress – we’re getting off track a bit.
Let’s say you want to watch a movie, but all you’ve got is a piddly little laptop with a fifteen inch screen. Hardly an ideal viewing medium, is it? That thirty inch you’ve got in the living room, on the other hand… that’s looking pretty sweet, isn’t it? Trouble is, how do you go about hooking your rig up to your TV?
Believe it or not, it’s actually very simple, provided you have the requisite cables- and ports. First things first, you’re going to need to figure out what cable you’re going to need. Generally, there are two different ‘types’ of video ports: S-Video, and HDMI. Older systems and televisions will sport an S-Vid jack, while newer models will generally use HDMI.
Here’s what an S-Video connection looks like:
And an HDMI:
And the cables:
Get all that? Good. If both your television and your system have an HDMI connection, the process you need to go through is really quite simple:
- Plug the cable into your computer’s HDMI port, then plug it into the TV’s HDMI port.
- On your television, switch through the inputs until you get to the default HDMI.
- Make sure you’ve enabled your second display. You can do this by going to display->display settings.
- That’s it! You’re done! You should be able to use the HDTV like a computer monitor, and watch videos on it. Sound will carry through to the speakers.
If you’re using an S-Video cable, on the other hand…
- Plug the cable into your computer’s S-Video Slot, and then plug it into the TV’s S-Video slot. If you’re using an extremely old model of television, you might need to buy a converter.
- On your television, switch your inputs until you get to whatever the S-Video input happens to be. If you’re using a converter with composite cables, the input’ll likely either be video 1 or video 2. Otherwise, it’s likely to be S-Vid.
- Make sure you’ve enabled your second display. You can do this by going to display->display settings.
- If you want to route sound through your television as well, you may need to purchase a male to male audio converter or a VGA adapter with composite audio cables.
- That should do it. Enjoy your new monitor!
Image Credits:[Amazon,MaximumPC]
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I did this a long time ago with my PC and my 27″ flat screen CRT via a DVI->HDMI cable. I’ve only used it maybe half a dozen times and here’s why.
I’m one of those people who, back when I used a CRT monitor for my computer display, HAD to raise the refresh rate from 60Hz to 85Hz, because the flickering in the corners of my FOV drove me nuts. For those that didn’t know, standard LCD monitors generally still run at 60Hz, but you don’t notice this effect due to technical differences in how the screen is refreshed. Well, when I hook my CRT TV up to my computer, it’s now effectively a big CRT monitor, and it runs at 60Hz, and I’ve not found any way to change that. Computer monitors lets you do this, but I guess the TV manufacturers don’t see a reason for it.
Just something to keep in mind.
Many modern TV sets also have a VGA port so this is also an option and all or nearly all laptops have VGA.