TV for computer

[lanceja]

General question for you experts. I was talking to someone this morning and he said that he saw in Office Depot a computer monitor that had a switch on the side. You had an adapter on the monitor that would let you plug into a computer and another one that would let you plug in cable TV. The switch would let you change between computer and TV.

His question to me was that is there a way (adapter/switch, etc) that would you can plug your computer into a TV? I know that with the Gaming hardware you have an adapter that lets you plug into your TV, but is there something out there to let you plug your computer into your TV.

Thanks for any information that I get.

 

[pmonett]

There are several video cards that allow for direct TV output (ATI's All In Wonder series are notoriously good for that, I think).
But of course, that would mean changing hardware if you don't already have one (and if you did, you probably wouldn't be asking the question).
If you do not wish to renew your PC innards, then you can google for "video adapters" and you'll probably find references like Avermedia (

http://www.averm.co.uk).

Personally, I had to do some shopping for the sake of video capture and editing, and wound up with a Pinnacle product that has worked satisfactorily for me. Not the cheapest way to hook a PC to a TV though.

Pascal.

 

[rclarke250]

The problem is that a TV does not have the resolution of a monitor, so word files look really blurry on a TV. HDTV and LCD,Plasma screens lessen this somewhat. There are VGA to TV out boxes. But again you will loose some resolution.

 

[temporello]

I have a TV more than 10 years old and it supports resolution up to 1024x768 and word files don't look "blurry" at all!

 

[yada]

There are any number of video cards that have a TV out connector and allow you to switch between them. The TV capture adaptor I use allow TV to be watched on the monitor but have no output connector for a TV so the video card is still needed.

 

[cdogg]

Many cards made since the GeForce3 and Radeon 8500 cards came out have at least an S-video out. Even back about 4 years ago, it wasn't uncommon to see "video out" present in cards like the ATI VIVO (Video-In Video-out) Radeon 7200 or the GeForce2 MX cards. Like others have said, ATI All-In-Wonder cards old and new versions have both video in and video out. Most of these cards also have the ability to output to both the monitor and TV at the same time.

Unfortunately, most TV's only support a resolution less than 544 x 372 (the actual resolution depends on whether it is optimized for the NTSC or PAL format, which usually wastes 30% of the maximum, placing the actual res closer to 380 x 260). As you can see, this is considerably less than what a regular SVGA monitor can do at 640 x 480 - explaining the fuzzy text you will likely see.

Of course, there are few high-res TV's out there optimized for digital input, so it is possible for some of us to be as lucky as temporello.


~cdogg
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