Hooking a laptop to my HDTV

[Khamsin]

I figured I'd just change my topic instead of make a new one since its all related. But I kept the original post down below.

I managed to connect my laptop to my HDTV and watch HD-quality movies, and it works great. But now that I've done that, I'm wondering if it's possible to make the screen crisper when not watching movies. i.e. if I am just doing regular computer stuff, the text and all that is a little fuzzy and hard to read on the HDTV. Is there a way to make it clearer?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Headphone to composite audio connector

Anyone know of such a thing and where it might be bought (in-store, I want one today)?

I connected my laptop to my HDTV with the DVI out on my laptop (using a DVI to HDMI connector), and there are a couple composite (red/white audio) connections next to the HDMI input on the TV, so I imagine I'd want to connect that somehow to the headphone jack on my laptop. Assuming this is all correct, what would I buy and where would I most likely find it?

[Izzy]

Anyone know of such a thing and where it might be bought (in-store, I want one today)?

I connected my laptop to my HDTV with the DVI out, and there are a couple composite (red/white audio) connections next to the DVI input on the TV, so I imagine I'd want to connect that somehow to the headphone jack on my laptop. Assuming this is all correct, what would I buy and where would I most likely find it?

http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/produ...081707w345.jpg
Like that? It's called an RCA to Mini adapter. I just bought one like 2 days ago. Any radio shack will have them as well as tiny electronic shops.

*EDIT* here's another picture of one. Is this what you're talking about?

http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/produ...156051w345.jpg

[Khamsin]

Whichever of those would plug into my headphone jack on the laptop on one end, and into the red/white audio composite jacks on the TV on the other end.

[Isiolia]

It's a common cable. Most places that sell A/V cables should have them. Wal Mart, Best Buy, Radio Shack, whatever.

You just want a stereo 1/8" jack to stereo RCA cable. They're commonly used for hooking up an iPod (or in ages past, a portable CD player) to a home stereo. Or, as you're trying to do, hooking up a computer to a home audio device.

[Izzy]

Whichever of those would plug into my headphone jack on the laptop on one end, and into the red/white audio composite jacks on the TV on the other end.

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/cables/rca2mstereo.jsp

Yea that's what you want. I'd suggest you go to a radio shack and buy it. It'll be way cheaper than ordering online and having to pay shipping.

[Khamsin]

Thanks, that's kinda what I needed, only with female connections. The cord I used to connect to the TV was a male-to-male cable. So I found one of those things that look like a stealth bomber only instead of splitting a headphone jack into two of the same, it split it into two RCA outputs.

[Cephius]

I figured I'd just change my topic instead of make a new one since its all related. But I kept the original post down below.

I managed to connect my laptop to my HDTV and watch HD-quality movies, and it works great. But now that I've done that, I'm wondering if it's possible to make the screen crisper when not watching movies. i.e. if I am just doing regular computer stuff, the text and all that is a little fuzzy and hard to read on the HDTV. Is there a way to make it clearer?

If you have a DVI out on the laptop, your best bet is to get a DVI-HDMI converter and plug it in to a HDMI input on your tp. Then crank up the resolution and things should look a lot better. A lot of the Nvidia cards nowdays can also be set to output to 720p/1080i/1080p TVs so I'd certainly look for that option too. If your card is nvidia, it's under the control panel under "Change the Signal or HD Format"

[Khamsin]

I figured I'd just change my topic instead of make a new one since its all related. But I kept the original post down below.

I managed to connect my laptop to my HDTV and watch HD-quality movies, and it works great. But now that I've done that, I'm wondering if it's possible to make the screen crisper when not watching movies. i.e. if I am just doing regular computer stuff, the text and all that is a little fuzzy and hard to read on the HDTV. Is there a way to make it clearer?

If you have a DVI out on the laptop, your best bet is to get a DVI-HDMI converter and plug it in to a HDMI input on your tp. Then crank up the resolution and things should look a lot better. A lot of the Nvidia cards nowdays can also be set to output to 720p/1080i/1080p TVs so I'd certainly look for that option too. If your card is nvidia, it's under the control panel under "Change the Signal or HD Format"

Yeah, it's at 1920 x 1080 and I tried the signal/HD format settings, and I can read the text, but they're still a bit fuzzy and hard to read unless I just bump up the font size since I'm sitting further back than I normally would at the laptop.

[Izzy]

I figured I'd just change my topic instead of make a new one since its all related. But I kept the original post down below.

I managed to connect my laptop to my HDTV and watch HD-quality movies, and it works great. But now that I've done that, I'm wondering if it's possible to make the screen crisper when not watching movies. i.e. if I am just doing regular computer stuff, the text and all that is a little fuzzy and hard to read on the HDTV. Is there a way to make it clearer?

If you have a DVI out on the laptop, your best bet is to get a DVI-HDMI converter and plug it in to a HDMI input on your tp. Then crank up the resolution and things should look a lot better. A lot of the Nvidia cards nowdays can also be set to output to 720p/1080i/1080p TVs so I'd certainly look for that option too. If your card is nvidia, it's under the control panel under "Change the Signal or HD Format"

Yeah, it's at 1920 x 1080 and I tried the signal/HD format settings, and I can read the text, but they're still a bit fuzzy and hard to read unless I just bump up the font size since I'm sitting further back than I normally would at the laptop.

Where is this signal/HD format setting? I can't find it anywhere Q_Q

[Robert]

Are you looking in Advanced mode or Basic? I don't think its selectable in Basic (assuming you're in Nvidia's Control Panel) It doesn't show up until you connect a HDTV

[Khamsin]

And it also wouldn't stick if I was cloning the display. I had to use only the HDTV (and leave the laptop display off) before it'd accept the settings and stick.

[Robert]

using a dvi to hdmi cable?

[Izzy]

I was using a standard VGA cable to plug it into my TV. My TV has a VGA input.

[Xanthe]

I have my laptop connected to my Samsung 7 Series using the VGA connector as well. My laptop has a dongle for AV out so I use that for S/PDIF out to my receiver (the video outputs on the dongle are composite/s-video only). All I had to do in Windows was run the nVidia display wizard and set it to use Dual-View with my Samsung as the primary display. I could probably have just used the Fn-F8 (or whatever key it is) to switch between laptop/clone/tv output, but this let me keep the proper resolution for each display and I didn't feel like monkeying around too much. The setup works great so far, but it's really just a temporary solution until I build myself a HTPC towards the end of the summer.

[Izzy]

One think I don't like is the lack of detail on the TV output. It kinda looks like ass. Maybe because the TV is not designed to run as a monitor.

[Khamsin]

One think I don't like is the lack of detail on the TV output. It kinda looks like ass. Maybe because the TV is not designed to run as a monitor.

Yeah, mine is like that, too. For some reason, brightness and color seems to be accurately reflected, but fine edges and exact pixels are not.

[Izzy]

One think I don't like is the lack of detail on the TV output. It kinda looks like ass. Maybe because the TV is not designed to run as a monitor.

Yeah, mine is like that, too. For some reason, brightness and color seems to be accurately reflected, but fine edges and exact pixels are not.

I output FFXI to it last night at 1920x1080 and the text looked like total ass. It was fuzzy as all hell.

[Day]

Been trying to figure out the same thing. I swear some people say they have their TV quality as good as their monitor, but mine always looks like buckets of ass.... if someone figures out or knows the trick to making the resolution crisp please let us know!

[Khamsin]

I set my resolution to 1280x720 on my HDTV and it seemed much crisper. At least, I could read the text.

[Xanthe]

I actually tried to set my laptop resolution to 1280x720 and my HDTV told me the input mode wasn't supported. Didn't really look into it though since I haven't had the time.