How can I connect my PC to my HDTV?

Factual Questions
1

Keywords: Toshiba, DVI, HDMI, PC.

I have a beefy PC capable of decoding HD video with a 7800GT GPU Dual-DVI card. I have several videoclips in Xvid format as well as a few HD movies in .TS or x264 formats.

About 50 feet away from this PC is my **51" 1080i toshiba HDTV **and my Onkyo 780 receiver. They boast HDMI and Optical in as well as component and I would like to stream video and audio to them.

There is an 50 ft HDMI cable available at monoprice.com for $100.

1-if I combine this with a DVI adapter, will the signal from my PC reach my TV unharmed?

2-If I plug the DVI adapter in the second DVI input on my 7800GT, can I use my TV as a secondary screen in addition to my 1920x1200 Monitor?

3-What cable should I use for the audio? It’d need to go 50 ft…

4-Will the image on the tv look good automatically or would I need to use Powerstrip to modulate the signal? If so, what settings do I need to change to output to 1080i screen?

Unfortunately, none of the alternative options out there are useful:

*1- The xbox needs to be soft or hard-modded and can’t decode HD.

2- My Norcent Dvd/DivX/XviD player has problem with some files, doesn’t support subtitles and lacks HD support entirely.

3-Tivos and other ReplayTV devices are useless to me since I don’t record TV. I don’t even have cable.

4-A secondary PC in my living room would cost too much seeing as I’d need a really beefy CPU to decode x264. Making it pretty would cost me another couple hundreds too. It’s an option in the future though.
*
I hope you will be able to help me out with this stuff! I especially value the input of people who already have a similar setup to what I’m describing or considered it and decided against it for whatever reasons.

Thank you for your time!

/Gozu

2

I don’t believe Toshiba has any support/drivers for their HDTVs for use as computer monitors. I’ve got one. It will play movie files on my computer quite well but it sucks for everything else. Go with a HDTV that has official support.

3

You could trade with me. I have a Philips 36" HDTV with a VGA input. You can connect the computer directly to that with no fancy cablework at all. Basically, my TV is a computer monitor that thinks it’s a TV.

4

It should work fine. The HDMI input is just an input - the TV does not care what is attached at the other end (i.e. no drivers are required).

As for how it will look, that depends on the resolution of the clips on the PC - low res will look really bad when blown up huge and shown on an HDTV.

5

Thanks. I still need answers to all my 4 questions so I’m bumping.

6

If you can’t find an answer here, you might want to try more specialized forums:

http://www.tv-cards.com/messageboard/

and

http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index.php

7

I have a computer of mine in the living room directly connected to my HDTV, so I’ll try to help a little…

When I purchased my computer and HDTV I knew I wanted to do this, so I got a TV with a DVI imput on it. I have seen a lot about going from DVI to HDMI and I dont believe there are any issues, but I haven’t tried it. My computer (with GeForce 6600gt card) just sees the TV as a standard PNP monitor. My TV has a resolution of 1024x768, so I run my system at that and I’ve had no problems at all. I have two TV tuner cards, but they are standard tuners, so TV doesn’t look any better. I don’t have any HD DVD’s either, so I have yet to try that. However, I do set games I play to 1024x768 and they look a lot better than played on say a PS2.

As far as audio goes, are you lucky enough to have an optical out for the sound on your computer? If so you can run that to your audio reciever. You may have to change what output you’re using at the moment on the computer, but it should work otherwise.

8

Thanks for the links. That ought to help.

9

Sure thing. If you do manage to find an answer, would you mind copying it here? I’d actually like to know myself – just out of curiosity. Thanks :slight_smile: