How to - Connecting PC to TV

Connecting Pc to TV – Connecting a computer to a TV can make movies much more enjoyable – Games much more playable, you can even hook it up so you can use the TV’s speakers making music sound better.

What do we need for this?

A laptop computer with either a VGA or DVI type of video output port or a Desktop computer with 2 video output ports, unless you intend to keep swapping cables around between the monitor and the TV get a decent video card that has 2 ports, many cards now have both a VGA and DVI port.

Video card – depending on what you want to do when connected to the TV will generally have a direct bearing on the ability or power of the video card.
If you are using a laptop then you are pretty much stuck with whatever the laptop has built in, but if you have a desktop trying to run the later generation of games, Hi-Definition movies or even the iTunes 8 visualizer on your TV will require more than just an average video card, luckily though there are lots of powerful cards to choose from at very cheap prices, something with around 512mb or ram should suffice.

An LCD or Plasma TV with a VGA or DVI input; I would recommend against using S-Video as the quality is no where near as good as a VGA or DVI connection can offer.

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Windows XP or Vista – both of these operating systems has the ability to divide output to multiple screens.
Windows XP Media Centre and Windows Vista both have a media centre interface built in and although you can still open any files etc, it is nice touch allowing you to select videos and music directly through this rather than navigating around the Windows interface.
If you don’t have any Windows media centre software search under Google or Yahoo for Media Portal, its free and gives pretty much the same functionality.

VGA or DVI cable – depending on how you will connect you will of course require a cable – the limit of the cable is around 10 metres, but many cables will not allow a connection from a PC to a TV to exceed 5 (this may be due to the quality of the cable itself)

Audio Cable – Much of the time a standard 3.5mm audio cable will be fine, but check to make sure which input your TV has.

Once you have everything in place and the computer is connected to the TV via the video and audio cable – select the correct input for the computer on your TV, if using the VGA port it will probably be listed as PC or Computer, but your TV’s manual will be able to tell you which input you need to select.

Next we just need to extend or move the image from the computer to the TV, the one thing you cannot do here is duplicate the image or the resolution will stay the say as the computers settings.

If you choose to move the image to the computer this will turn of the image to your computer monitor, but will allow you to use the optimum resolution for your TV.

Extending the image will in effect give you two screens working as one big screen; each of these can have a different resolution which is useful if you want to do other things on your computer while watching a movie etc.

Computer adviser connecting pc to tv article

As above once the second screen in selected, the Extend
desktop box is active, enabling image to be extended to
screen 2

To force the output to your TV you can either use the software that should have been installed with your video card or you can right click on your desktop and with XP select properties, or with Vista again right click on the desktop and select personalize and display settings – now on either operating system you should see an image of two monitors – Number 1 is the primary screen, and number 2 is of course your TV – Now select the number 2 screen and the box Extend the desktop onto this monitor will be active – Select this and it should automatically recognise the maximum resolution of your TV (check in the TV user manual again to find out what the maximum resolution will be) now move the slider to the maximum your TV can support, you should find this is the highest the slider will go in any case.

Now hopefully you will have an image on your TV

If not make sure you have selected the correct input for the PC input

Computer adviser connecting pc to tv article

If you are having problems connecting pc to TV or your pc is not up to the job find out how to put together a cheap media centre pc

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Computer adviser connecting pc to tv article