Help connection PC to LCD TV

Factual Questions
1

Last year, my mom bought herself a cheap LCD TV and a DVD/VCR combination player. Nothing remotely high-end, she’s not a big video buff or anything. Mostly, it was something to put movies on for when she’s babysitting her nieces. When I was setting it up for her, I noticed that it had a VGA port in the back. A little while ago, she wanted to buy her own PC, as well. I remembered that VGA port, and assumed that she could use that for her monitor, as well, saving money and desk space.

Well, she got the computer, and I set it up for her, and it almost works. Only, the image on the TV looks like crap. At anything other than the lowest resolution, text is completely illegible. Even at 800 x 600, it’s a headache-inducing blur, although still usable. Pictures look a bit better, but still should be a lot sharper. The DVD/VCR player works fine, so I know it’s not a defective screen. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Does this TV simply not work with a computer? Is there some piece of software/hardware that can solve this problem? Or does my mom have to resign herself to having a TV and a monitor on her desk at the same time?

The TV is an Insignia NS20LCD. The computer is a Dell with a 3 Ghz processor and 1 gig of ram, and no video card.

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

Oh, and it’s running Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

3

Unless it’s an HDTV, it can only display 480 lines. So 640x480 will be fine. Any higher resolution will get resampled by the tv to 640x480, which would indeed wreak havoc with text. It simply hasn’t got any more pixels.

4

Hmm. For some reason, the lowest setting on her computer is 800 x 600.

5

it’s likely that the hardware the PC has wont do anything lower than 800x600.

Meanwhile, your tv (non HD) need 640x480 for a crisp picture.

Advice: get a monitor.

6

I just glanced at my settings, and the lowest available resolution is indeed 800 x 600. Odd. I wonder why that restriction is in there?

LCDs work best at their native pixel resolution, as mentioned upthread. I can’t help thinking that things might sort of work if you set the computer’s resolution to twice 640 x twice 480, or 1280 x 960, but other than that, no. A monitor would seem to be called for.

Does the video card have a TV-out connector? That might work.

7

It’s not the video card; WXP won’t go lower than 800x600.

8

Unless you are in DOS/W95/W98 compatablity mode.
However, I doubt the DVD driver will allow for that.

9

Most video cards do not have this, but some add-on vid capture cards do (and vid-capture/main video combocards normally suck—I have read this but do not have a cite readily avaiable—all I have is personal experience with a seperate vid-capture card).

However, if the OP does have a seperate card, then the TV-out should work better than the VGA.