Shoutbox

I am going shopping tomorrow for an lcd tv for my room probably 26" (66cm) or 32" (81cm) depending on what kind of specials i can find.

anyway my question is, whilst i will primarily use it as a tv i want to be able to connect my laptop up to it from time to time. I was wondering what is the best way to do this? I connect this laptop up to my current tv (normal, standard television) using S-video and that works ok I was just wondering if there is a better option.

I have seen some of the tvs have pc input written in their description and was wondering what that meant in terms of connecting it.

What would achieve the best quality? I want to be able to watch some movies i have on my harddrive as well as play some games on the big screen. Ease of use is also an issue. I want to be able to switch of straight away when i want it, so no need for looking for cables and moving around to plug it in at the back etc so i can leave it plugged in and it will not affect my normal day to day use.

One other question is would i be able to set this as an extra monitor that keeps its settings when i switch to it (ie resolution) cos at the moment i have a key binding (alt + f5) that switches the monitor to the tv and turns the laptop monitor off but i then have to squint on the blurry crappy tv to change the resolution to 600 X 800 so i can make out the words. (hopefully this wont be a problem on an lcd )

So if there are any other methods of connecting that i may be unaware of, or you have any experience in doing this please let me know, possibly with some links to cables etc??

Thanks for the advice.

Daniel

Sorry to bump this. I left it 11hrs but now its the next day and im going shopping today. Just wondering if anyone has any advice before i leave so i can get a better idea on what to look for? I assume it would be similar to connecting a normal computer monitor but does anyone know anymore about it?

Thanks

I wouldn't make it a priority though. If you find a TV with such inputs and they have a decent price, go for it. But don't waste money on it. It may be nice as a 'gadget' kind of thing, but not really needed as you can use the TV as a second monitor even without this special PC-input (though the quality would be slithly less).

Most of the time, TV's with such function costs a lot more too... so... the factor would be if you want to spend that extra money (I know I wouldn't).

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Originally posted by Dan0208
What would achieve the best quality?

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PC-input (aka VGA input)...

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Originally posted by Dan0208
I want to be able to watch some movies i have on my harddrive

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In most cases, those movies are in a compressed quality anyways, you would not much benefit from a digital VGA input compared to a normal S-Video input.

As for DVDs, this goes roughly the same. In fact, playing DVDs on your computer could output a lesser picture quality compared to playing it on a standalone DVD player to begin with.

Thus again no 'big' difference between a vga-input and s-video here.

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Originally posted by Dan0208
as well as play some games on the big screen.

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Quality with a vga-input would be better. Then again, even with s-video you have a very good quality. And most games change graphics on the screen fast (aka: the picture is moving all the time), the more a picture is non-static, the less you'll notice a difference between vga and s-video input.

If there is a visible difference at all, you would notice it most on static images (eg: photo's).

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Originally posted by Dan0208

Ease of use is also an issue. I want to be able to switch of straight away when i want it, so no need for looking for cables and moving around to plug it in at the back etc so i can leave it plugged in and it will not affect my normal day to day use.

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Doesn't matter, both vga and s-video inputs are equally easy to work with; it's just a matter of setting your video card driver settings once and that's it.

Ok thanks very much for your reply cookie.
Even when looking through the catelogues i noticed what you just confirmed about the jump in price.
And considering what you said about it not being a priority (which its not) i think i might look for the better value tvs.

In that case, for the times i do want to connect it how would you recommend i go about it. (assuming it doesnt have pc input).

Once again thanks for the reply

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Originally posted by Dan0208
In that case, for the times i do want to connect it how would you recommend i go about it. (assuming it doesnt have pc input).

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Assuming you have a graphics card which has a VGA-out (for your monitor) and a s-video out (for tv), simply connect the s-video out with your tv s-video-in (or buy a small converter from s-video to scart if your tv doesn't have a s-video input plug. It will almost always have scart; otherwise it would be a 'bad' tv ).

If your video-card has a vga-out and a normal video-out, do the same, but plug it in your TV in the video-in instead of s-video-in.

If you do not have a pc video card which supports dual view:
- you either need to buy/insert a second video card
- you either need to buy/insert a new video card which supports 2 outputs.
- you need to buy a video splitter (but this is a last option though; and even not always the cheapest (if you want quality))

After everything is hooked up, set your video card driver settings accordingly. Resolution settings, frequency, etc should only be set once. If your driver software is any good (almost all are) it would retain those settings without any problems.

Sorry i must of replied while you were editing to make your larger post so it might of seemed like i ignored what you added. i have come back  and read it all again and appreciate the effort you have gone into in your posts. The quality of your answers throughout this forum are excellent and definately makes you a much valued member.

The laptop in question does vga out for a monitor as well as s-video (which i have been using on the old tv).
It also has another output labelled expansion port 2 (note this is not the pcmcia slot) which i am not familiar with. i take it it is for a printer etc although it is much thinner than the usual parallel port etc.

anyway, hopefully ill find some good specials today when i go shopping. your replies have been extremely helpful. I think ill do as you initially said and look for the best value/quality set rather than requirements such as pc input, as you mentioned the quality is marginal (if any).

One more thing, i have noticed some of the top models have the new technology hdmi input for up and coming technology. these however are the more expensive sets (mostly out of my price range). I was just wondering if, considering i plan to have this tv for a long time, i am not doing myself any favours by not including inputs for new technology. or is this something that will slowly be phased in and as such is not that important unless i am some big movie buff that will do anything for the perfect picture quality?

Thankyou once again

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Originally posted by Dan0208
It also has another output labelled expansion port 2 (note this is not the pcmcia slot) which i am not familiar with. i take it it is for a printer etc although it is much thinner than the usual parallel port etc.

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If it has 9 pins, it's probably a COM port, COM 2 to be more precise. This is a serial port and used for serial mice, modems, and other devices like that.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dan0208
One more thing, i have noticed some of the top models have the new technology hdmi input for up and coming technology. these however are the more expensive sets (mostly out of my price range). I was just wondering if, considering i plan to have this tv for a long time, i am not doing myself any favours by not including inputs for new technology. or is this something that will slowly be phased in and as such is not that important unless i am some big movie buff that will do anything for the perfect picture quality?

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yep indeed, very expensive and not much use at the moment as there is not much equipment which already use that standard. And the equipment which does is equaly expensive. In practice it is indeed something for the big movie buff (for now)...