[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

Have you tried to share pictures, movies, videos, or games from your PC/computer/laptop with your friends and family on a TV screen, because your computer screen is too small to get everyone around it? Connecting your PC/computer/laptop to a TV screen is very easy and not expensive.

There are different ways you can connect your computer to your TV. They involve the use of different types of cables. Which cable to use to connect your PC/computer/laptop to TV depends on the following:

• type(s) of connection(s) of your computer/laptop/PC
• type(s) of connection(s) of your TV

If your connections don't match, you can always buy an adapter.

Types of cables/connections you can use to connect PC/computer/laptop to TV:

• HDMI
• DVI
• VGA
• S-Video
• Composite (RCA)

You can get the best quality with HDMI and DVI connections.The quality is worse when using S-Video and especially Composite (RCA) connections.

Different connectors used to connect your PC/computer/laptop to TV:

• RCA - Three round, colored sockets (white - left audio, red - right audio, yellow - composite video).
• S-Video - Four-prong round plug
• VGA - 15-pin connector
• DVI port - Rectangular with 24 pins arranged in three horizontal rows of eight pins for digital video
• HDMI port - Rectangular with 19 pins (one-half the size of the DVI port).

How to connect a PC/computer/laptop to a TV:

• HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) gives the best quality now. All HDTVs have HDMI connectors. Some laptops also have HDMI connectors, but chances are that your PC/computer/laptop has no HDMI connectors. If both your your PC/computer/laptop and your TV have HDMI connectors, then you only need an HDMI cable to connect them. It is pretty easy to buy such a cable and I repeat this connection gives the best quality, so use it if you can.
  
  If your laptop/computer doesn't have any HDMI connectors, it might have DVI or VGA connectors.
  
• DVI (Digital Visual Interface) is another digital connection.
  
  If your HDTV has a DVI connector, then you need a DVI to DVI cable to connect your computer/laptop with your HDTV.
  
  If your HDTV has an HDMI connector, you can use a DVI to HDMI adaptor to connect your computer/laptop to TV that are not cheap.
  
  Please note that there are DVI-D and DVI-I connectors, so you need to research more on that.
  
  The drawback of using DVI instead of HDMI is that you need a separate audio cable connecting output of your sound card with your HDTV (or your speakers), if you want to watch a video with sound on your TV.
  
• VGA is an analogue connection, but it is still much better than S-Video or RCA. VGA connectors are ubiquitous, so you can find them on most computers and laptops.
  
  If your HDTV has a VGA connection, you only need a VGA to VGA cable to connect your computer with your HDTV. The cable is very cheap.
  
  You can also use a VGA to S-Video or a VGA to RCA adapter, but it will give you worse quality.
  
  Please note that you need a separate audio cable.
  
• S-Video – probably the most common analogue connector that can be found on some laptops and some computer graphics cards.
  
  Most TVs have an S-Video connector, so you need an S-Video to S-Video cable. The cable is cheap.
  Please note that there are 2 types of S-Video cables: 4-pin and 7-pin. Make sure to use the right one (refer to your user guides for more).
  
  If your TV has RCA connectors only, you can use an S-Video to RCA adapter.
  
  Please note that you need a separate audio cable if you get video signal from an S-Video port.
  
• Composite connections (RCA) are the yellow, red, and white connections. Red is right analogue audio, white is left analogue audio, yellow is composite video.

You should also take into account the length of the cables that you can purchase.

Please note that many cables need to be hooked up when your TV and computer/laptop are powered off.


If you know more methods of connecting PC to TV, laptop to TV, computer to TV, please reply.

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

Setting up your TV:
Select the input that your computer is connected to the remote control of your TV. This input can be called something like HDMI, AV1, AV2, ...

If you get a distorted picture, you can try to go to the TV settings and change the video resolution (HDTVs have several resolution settings, but most older TVs usually don't have any settings like that at all).

Setting up your computer/laptop:
You need to set up your graphics card to send the signal to the required port.

If you get a distorted picture, you can try to change the resolution on your laptop/computer. You can also try to change the color scheme to 24-bit if it is set to 32-bit. Aspect ratio might also need to be changed.

The screen aspect ratio is a monitor's proportion of width top height. Prior to 2003, most computer monitors had a screen ratio of 4:3, the same as standard TVs. Right now ratios of 16:10 are quite common on laptops. HDTV and some laptops have a ratio of 16:9. Movies and still photography have different ratios. A common example of a screen-ratio problem is when wide-screen video is shown on a standard screen: The result is undesirable letter-boxing with black bars filling the screen on the top and bottom.

If you use a laptop, you may need to press FN+F8 (the CRT/LCD) key on your keyboard to have the signal sent to the TV out of your laptop.

Changed the configuration of your screens, i.e. extend desktop, clone desktop etc…

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

If you have an S-Video connector on your laptop/computer and SCART on your TV, you can use SCART-RCA adapter and:

1. an S-Video to RCA video adapter. One end of such an adapter has S-Video, the other end has a yellow male RCA jack.

2. an audio "Y" cable (3.5mm Mini-Stereo Male to Two RCA Male Speaker Cable). One end of such a cable has a microphone (headphone) jack and the other end is two male RCA jacks: white and red.

Connect RCA jacks to SCART-RCA adapter so that colors match.





TV's with a single digital port labeled HDMI/DVI require only one cable when the source is another HDMI component. But when the source is a DVI laptop, you need a DVI-to-HDMI cable for the video and a 3.5mm Mini-Stereo Male to Two RCA Male Speaker Cable.

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

I have a VGA connector on my laptop. Can I connect it to HDMI connector of my HDTV?

No, you cannot connect a computer VGA output to an HDTV's HDMI port. Your VGA port sends analogue VGA signal, but your HDTV's HDMI port requires digital video signal.

Just connect VGA of your laptop with VGA of your HDTV using a regular VGA cable used to connect computers with monitors.

Can I connect HDMI of my laptop with my VGA monitor using a simple HDMI-to-VGA cable adapter?

No, a simple HDMI-to-VGA cable adapter will NOT work. Such adapters can be used on computers/laptops with specially-built HDMI outputs that can send out analogue VGA video signal.