MacGuyver

I searched for something like this but I got nothing so....

Do any of you guys/girls know a way I can hook up my tower to my TV, so I can play my movies on my TV instead of having to sit infront of my monitor to watch them? Thanks in advance.

__________________
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
---Aristotle

Deeds, not words, shall speak [for] me.
---John Fletcher

Willravel

There are hookups going from usb, firewire, or ethernet. They turn to RCA (the white, red, and yellow hookups) or fiberoptic/s-video (higher quality) for the tv. They run from about $60-$200 I think. Check out something like Fry's electronics (www.outpost.com) or CompUSA (www.compusa.com) for some. If your tv is too old and doesn't have rca, you can get an r/f modulator to go from rca to coaxial. PM if you have questions.

KnifeMissile

It's funny you should mention this because I'm doing this right now! It turns out that all modern video cards (except the expensive high-end ones) come with TV-out. How the drivers typically work is that the overlay layer is outputed to the TV, so output from most media players (including Microsoft's built-in media player) and (software) DVD players will be shown on your television!

So, if I understand your question, any video card with TV-out will do!

spindles

Google came up with this pretty quickly:
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/P...o_adapter.html

using this:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=e...e+Search&meta=

I must say I've done it at a mates place using the svideo out (I think, and I'm too lazy to find a torch and crawl under the desk to confirm) on my ATI Radeon card - so no adapter necessary. He has a huge assed plasma and we did it to play games on

__________________
who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

Coppertop

Once FngKestrel sat on the couch and watched me play Max Payne all the way through with the kung-fu mod, took me 6 straight hours. Man we loved that Sony TV.

MacGuyver

Hey thanks guys. I figured there must be some kind of cable too hook up to the tv, just like the cable I use for the PS2 hookup, I just wasnt sure about the computer end of things.

__________________
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
---Aristotle

Deeds, not words, shall speak [for] me.
---John Fletcher

Scorpion23

As everyone has said, pretty much every video card made now has some form of video out. However, depending on the TV you have it's possible to get really kick-ass pictures.

The default for most cards is an S-video out port which can act either as a second monitor or a clone of the main screen. Cheaper or older cards often had a composite out instead of S-video, it gives a lower quality output but still works for most games and such. The best setup would be to get a plasma or LCD with VGA connections, but that'll cost you over $5,000.

Middle to high-end would be a TV with component inputs and an adapter to match. I'm not sure what model card you have but ATI offers a component out adapter with a few of their models. I've got one and it's friggen sweet. It has the clearest picture I've ever seen on a TV.

spindles

He did say it was for watching movies - so he doesn't necessarily need a good (read plasma/lcd) TV to make this work...

__________________
who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

royalke

if you're avoiding the new video card route, u can buy a vga scanline converter, they weren't too pricey when i used one and they do a good job

MacGuyver

basically, I just want to plug my compy 386 (obscure strongbad reference) into my TV, so I can play some of the longer avi files that are on my harddrive, onto the TV screen.

__________________
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
---Aristotle

Deeds, not words, shall speak [for] me.
---John Fletcher

bal8664

Ok i'll make this really easy for ya. If on the back of the PC where the monitor connects has a port that looks like this (the black circle one in the middle)
(http://www.maximopc.org/imagenes/rev....vga.tvout.jpg)
then you just need to get an s-video cable that hooks from your PC to your TV.

If You don't have an S-video connector on your tv you have to get an S-video to RCA adapter for about 15 bucks (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...08858?v=glance)

Assuming you can hook them together like that you'd need to go into your video card drivers (right click on desktop, properties, settings tab, advanced button, and sopme tab in there depending on your model of video card) and configure it to have the 2nd connector be a TV, its usually pretty easy for the major brand video cards (ati, nvidia).

If You DO NOT have that s-video port on your PC than you'll have to buy an external scan converter for about 60-100 bucks (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...onics&n=507846)

Hope this helps clear everything up. If you have any questions feel free to post them or PM me