Is it possible to connect a PC to a TV? I’ve got a brand-new TV, so it’s likely it has suitable connections, if they exist. Are they compatable?
(I’m asking because I missed Wed night’s Lost…it’s available on the web, but it would be nice if the family could gather around the TV instead of the computer monitor.)
Sure you can, although the resolution and quality will be considerably worse than a good monitor. How easy it is to set up depends greatly on your computer and the type of inputs your TV has. In the worst case, you’ll need a video adaptor to convert the VGA or SVGA output of the computer to a baseband composite video signal you can feed to the TV. If your computer is relatively new, it may have an S-video output; if your TV has an S-video input all you’ll need is an S-vid cable to connect them. Some much newer computers and TVs have a digital video (DVI) output or input. If you have this, the appropriate DVI cable will get you the best possible result. A very few TVs have an integrated SVGA input, so all you’d have to do swap the cable from the monitor to the TV, assuming your monitor is not of the type with a hardwired signal cable. So, yes, it’s definitely possible although it might require a trip or two to the store.
Cool! My PC definitely has an S-Video output (I know, because I started a thread here last year, the upshot of which is that the jack I thought was for a mouse was actually S-Video.) And I know my TV has S-Video input. And I’m pretty sure I have an S-video cable laying around somewhere.
There you go. You’ll need to select the S-vid input on your TV–usually there’s a button on the remote labeled INPUT, VIDEO or something similar. Also, remember that S-vid is only a video signal; you’ll need to run another set of cables from the PC’s sound card output to the TV’s audio inputs. There are 1/8" 3-conductor phone plug to RCA cables just for this purpose, available in almost any consumer electronics store, like Radio Shack, Circuit City or Best Buy.
Don’t expect to do much better than 800x600 as regular TVs have a lower resolution than computer monitors.
As you’re using a PC to play a TV show onto a TV, you ought to be able to set the PC for 640x480 and run the video full-screen, or something not much smaller than full-screen. Just be aware that changing screen resolution will re-arrange your desktop icons.
If you have an HDTV, you may be able to get away with something like a modern computer display. Your HDTV will need to ve able to display progressive-scan video, and will need either a SVGA or composite video input (analogue), or DVI input (digital). The HDMI input found on many HDTVs is related to DVI, and I believe there are adapter cables.
The second-highest HDTV resolution screen has 720 vertical lines of resolution (1280 x 720 pixels), which is roughly-equivalent to the middle-of-the-road for computer monitors these days (1024 x 768). The HDTV screen, with an aspect ratio of 16:9, is wider tham many monitors. A large number of plasma and LCD TV sets that advertise themselves as HD only display this resolution.
The highest-resolution HDTV screen has 1080 lines, equivalent to 1920 x 1080 pixels. Some computer monitors go up to 1920 x 1200, and can display this HDTV well, as well as a whopping big desktop.
The monitor I have displays 1920 x 1080, and can display my work computer’s complete 1280 x 1024 desktop in a window with plenty of room left over for… other things. 
Standard-definition TV fares a lot worse as a computer display.
A regular NTSC TV picture is equivalent to a 640 x 480 computer display. Most TVs will not be able to display this full resolution crisply, especially if they are connected via RF or composite video, not VGA or component. Back in the day of the VIC 20 and the Commodore 64, many TVs were used as computer monitors. These computer displays were often 320 x 240 or less.
As gotpasswords said, though, if you just want to display standard-resolution video (SDTV) in full-screen mode, your computer will switch to 640 x 480 to show it, and your TV should be able to display that. SDTV is interlaced, though, so fine horizontal lines will flicker on it. (This was well-known to Amiga users, since the Amiga computer’s display was built around the NTSC video standard.)
If your computer’s video card has that S-video output as well as regular SVGA output, may be able to display your video on the S-Video connector while continuing to use the SVGA computer screen for other things (like controlling the DVD player or streaming-video program). This depends on the capabilities of your video card and the driver software that came with it.
I started off with the S-video input on mine, but the resolution ws poor. I am now using my HDTV by outputing from an HD ATI video card to the DVI input. Note that I still had to tweak like crazy using Power Strip. Also note that you can really screw things up, including harming you TV (or so I’ve been told), using Power Strip.
Success! Here’s what I did:
My current living room has: stereo; computer desk with desktop PC; and speaker cables from PC to stereo, as QED mentions in post #4; wireless router; and my TV (plasma). The desktop PC doesn’t have an S-video connector, but my daughter’s laptop does.
So we plugged an S-video cable from TV to laptop, and unplugged the speaker cables from the desktop and plugged them into the laptop. Brought up the laptop, connected to the web and abc.com, changed the TV’s input to the S-video; toggled the display to send it to the TV (very good resolution, btw), turned on the stereo: voila! Last Wednesday’s *Lost *via hi-tech Frankenstein’s monster.
Thanks to everyone for their help.
No problem!
Out of curiosity, how good was the image quality?
Image quality was excellent. ABC’s video wasn’t full screen, so it was relatively small, which might’ve helped.