Getting my desktop to my PC

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Charles256
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Getting my desktop to my PC

Post by Charles256 »

Now to take a moment to elaborate. I've legally bought tons of DVD's and purchased iTunes downloads and backed up copies of DVD's to my hard drive so the problem comes in when I want to watch this content on my t.v. It's 27 inches and it only has access to s video input along with the standard red,white,yellow plug ins. (Sorry for the lack of technical terminology, I don't know it. ). Any idea how to get it there? I've thought of buying an avg to rca adapter then running that to my t.v. and then getting a lap top to rdp into my desktop and extending it's monitor onto my t.v. so that I can then watch it that way but that seems elaborate. Anyone know of a more elegant solution? The real crux lies in the formats being wildly different and menus and subtitles being a must. I'm open to suggestion.
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

The red/white/yellow is called a composite connection. Yellow being video, white and red being audio channels.

Basic converters from RGB (DB15/VGA) to composite are available for fairly cheap, if memory serves. If you want higher detail in the video signal, there's S-Video. They aren't as common as composite connectors.
Charles256
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Post by Charles256 »

So you think my solution is the easiest and most affordable way? I actually found a converter for vga to s-video for five bucks :)
ReDucTor
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Post by ReDucTor »

Extending your monitor is the easiest way, how ever there are many other methods if you want to spend the $$ to get a good system.

At home I use a chipped xbox with XBMC to watch the movies which are stored on my computer, personally I think this is the easiest and most cost effective method if you have an xbox.

I know people who have purchased devices from ebay, which are very useful for entertainment systems, one of which I've seen is a removable hard drive, which does AV and S video output, with capabilities for wireless, lan, etc using Samba and FTP, and suprisingly cheap considering. If you go to ebay you can find many of these little units, I think the one which my mate has is Mvix or something.
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Josh1billion
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Post by Josh1billion »

I'm not sure whether I understand the question correctly or not, but it sounds like you're trying to basically just get your PC's video output onto your TV. To do this, your video card might have an S-Video-out port or a yellow component cable port. Then you would just plug in the appropriate cable into one of those ports and the other end of the cable into your TV (S-Video has higher quality, or so I've heard, but I've only tested component cables-- the problem with component cables [the yellow cable] is that the resolution is very low, so the quality is bad, and small text is nearly impossible to read-- I tried WoW on my TV once that way, on a 27" TV, and the chat was practically impossible to read).

Like I said, component cables offer low quality, so that's going to be a problem if you want to do anything other than basically watch TV/movies and play games (games with low resolutions, preferrably, like ROMs). S-Video is supposed to be better quality, but based on what I've heard, I think it's still not a high-quality solution.
Charles256
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Post by Charles256 »

Well I found everything I need to get my desktop to my t.v. with an s-video connection for 20 bucks. :-D So I'll let you know how it goes and if it's bearable for watching movies. After watching a feqw movies I'll try it as a game alternative just for curiosity's sake. :)
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