Entertainment For Lively Minds
Telly / PC epiphany
Posted by Austin on 6 December 2011 - 5:37am.
I have a 32" Sony Bravia (bought in 2010) with internet connectivity in the rumpus room and a rubbish PC that we are about to replace. It occured to me only very recently that I could connect the rubbish PC to the telly in the rumpus room! It's still good for games and internet - it's just a bit slow sometimes.
This is where it gets technical. Is it just a case of connecting the PC's wires to the right holes in the back of the telly, so the telly is now the monitor? Is that it? Or is there something fundamental that will confound me? Any advice gratefully received.
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Yes
Assuming you have a socket on your television that is the same shape* as the one on your existing monitor then they should do the same thing. Better still, if your PC has an HDMI socket, you can use that instead and you'll get the PC sound on the television as well.
*It's not always the case with electronics to use this rule but it's OK on this occasion.
Agreed
Just don't connect USB to USB (often a bad idea).
I did the same thing
with an old netbook. The netbook doesn't have HDMI, but I connected it to the TV with a VGA cable. I then connected the audio outputs to the stereo (which is sitting underneath the TV), as VGA doesn't carry the audio signal.
VGA doesn't give you high definition, but it looks fine. You don't actually need much processing power to serve video (even HD video).
What you could also do is install something like Boxee on the laptop, which is a free media centre. If you have a wireless connection in the laptop, you can stream media from another computer.
Try and set the PC resolution to the native resolution of the tv
Right click on the desktop and change the display resolution. If its a laptop then they often default to 1024 x 768 which is 4:3 rather than 16:9. Using the native resolution means the screen does less processing and it should be sharper. Finally if you have trouble with moving images you can set the priority screen, external in your case, so that the PC resources go to running the telly screen rather than the internal laptop's. In extreme cases, set the laptop to external screen only (laptop screen is blank) Modern laptops are much better at this stuff but it is still useful stuff to try to get the best result.
We have the same telly
And my Samsung NC10 Netbook was absolutely fine connected via VGA and audio leads. Still not quite worked out how to connect them wirelessly yet, so if anyone else has a current Sony Bravia 32" and a wireless network if they could offer any advice on connecting wirelessly that would be great.
[Sucks in air through teeth]
Tricky that. I mean there are adapters available, but they'll cost you. Or you could spend loads of cash on Apple kit.
What you might be able to do is use your smartphone to control the netbook over wifi. Good for pointing and clicking commands (i.e. as a remote control), but fiddly for typing.
Team Viewer
clones your PC screen onto an ipad, presumably onto other devices too. I believe it needs a wireless internet connection rather than just a wifi network. The VNC app for ipad will, I think, do pretty much the same but doesn't require a full internet connection, just a network. I'm going to have a go at controlling a digital sound desk with VNC as this allows me to line check from the stage without walking up and down the room to adjust faders.
VNC
VNC is a great, multi platform application. I use it all the time to operate my Mac and you're right, it doesn't need any Internet connection (but it will work over the Internet). You wouldn't want to use it to view moving video though, especially over a wireless network.
Or
a Bluetooth keyboard/trackpad thingy might do the job.
Although I do find web browsing on a TV to be a rather unsatisfying experience.
Thanks everyone
It was all done without a hitch. I connected them via a VGA cable and retained the PC's speakers for audio.
Now it goes through the telly, the peformance has improved! But this may be because I got rid of the Macafee anti-virus programme and replaced it with Norton (which came with our new computer).
@Moseleymoles, I used the same adapter for wireless connectivity that I had before i.e. it is sticking out of a USB slot on the CPU. Works fine.