What do I need to "watch" my computer on TV?

Factual Questions
1

I’m not really looking to use my television as a monitor full-time. I know the resolution is not good enough on TV.

I have a few reasons I want to use my computer on TV:

**- I have some other region DVDs that play on computer, but not on TV

  • I have some .avi(XVID/DIVX) files I want to watch on my TV

  • As a teacher, I want an easy way to hook my laptop up to the TV.**

Remember, I have a laptop, but it does have ports on the side(USB and that really long one I put a firewire port and wireless network adapter into).

I thought I could get some kind of TV-out card that utilizes RCA cables(the red, yellow, and white ones) and would be very easy to use. I assume I would literally put it into my laptop(through the long port) and be essentially able to use my computer like a regular DVD player.

Is that right? Can I just buy the TV-out card without getting an entirely new video card? I have a laptop and don’t want some fancy graphics card for video games. I just want the TV-out part to view my computer occasionally through my tv(with sound).
**
What do I need and what is a reasonable price?**

Thanks!

2

Oh, my computer is about two years old, runs Windows XP and has a 2.2 ghz Celeron computer with 256 mg memory.

I don’t know if it matters, but I thought I’d state it.

3

SCAN CONVERTER?

4

I bought a topshiba last year and it said it couldn’t be connected to a tv for some reason

5

But I’m also looking for it to use the sound from my computer. Would a scan converter do that?

6

If you have external speakers, the cheapest way to do this is hope that your computer has an s-video port. My laptop that I got a couple of years ago came with one standard.

7

Thanks, chaoticbear, what I meant is that I do not want the sound coming from my computer, but from the television.

I know this seems complicated, but I want it to be easy. I want to plug RCA ports into my computer so I can use the ports to plug it into my computer just like a DVD player. Anything for that?

8

The sound part is easy. Just get a Y adapter that plugs into your headphone jack. The adapter has a male headphone jack on one end and two female stereo audio jacks on the other. Just like your A/V jacks you were talking about. Then you run audio cables from there to the Audio IN of your tv.

Just the other day I saw a device that plugged into the back of a laptop where the spare monitor would plug into. This device had video out and S-video out.
I think it was only like 50 bucks.
Go to the computer shop and find one of those little gadgets and then get a Y adapter for 3 bucks… oh BTW, if your Y adapter says “iPod” on it, then it will cost 15 bucks. The generic ones are just the same damn thing and on a couple dollars.

Good luck to you.

Just to brag, I recently hooked a projector up to my computer, so now all my videos are the size of my WALL. I love the ultra mega big screen!!! My computer has an S-Video out standard, so I didn’t need that little gadget I mentioned. But I happened to see it while I was shopping for wires.

9

I should have looked at that Scan Converter link. Yeah, that’s the thing I saw. Only the one in the link is a little more expensive. That will knock out your Video. Then, to get the sound, just buy a Y adapter for your headphone jack like I said. Then you’ll have all three RCA jacks - one video and two audio.

10

Does the laptop have S-video out? An S-video port looks a lot like a PS2 mouse jack. Here’s a picture:

http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/ISEO-rgbtcspd/learningcenter/home/connections_glossary.html?term=s-video_jack

If it does, you can get an inexpensive S-video to RCA adapter . Then run an RCA cable to the TV.

For sound, use your headphone jack with a3.5" stereo mini phone plug to RCA adapter cable