Connecting your PC to your TV

As we see computers start to slowly creep into every room of the house people are naturally wondering how they can take advantage of all of the free content available online and display it on their existing television set.

Imagine that you currently pay $100/month for cable (depending on your package this may be too low or too high, but you get the idea) - in this economy every penny counts and people are looking for alternatives to high monthly fees. Enter a "PC to TV converter" - these come in several different models that will allow you to display anything from standard digital formats (regular TV resolutions) to high-definition.

What is right for you?

The first question to ask yourself is what you are going to use the adapter for. If you need to be able to reach text, for instance, you are going to want a high definition adapter (popular options are USB to DVI converters and VGA to HDMI). These will give you the best images, but cost a little more than an adapter that will give you normal resolutions.

If you just want to watch Youtube, Hulu or Netflix (non-HD content), you can get away with a regular PC to TV converter, aka VGA to S-Video converter. These are very inexpensive (around $35/each now), but are very reliable and work almost universally with any television and PC.

Regular PC to TV

This is a litlte box that provides an active conversion of the VGA signal to a format that is readable by your television with both an S-Video and an RCA output (pretty much every television will have one or both of these interfaces available).

So you just plug one end into your computer or laptop (the VGA port is the port you would hook a monitor up to) and the other end into your television. It couldn't be easier.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that these adapters do not handle the audio portion of your content. You have two options - you can either turn up your laptop's speakers (which probably won't be loud enough in a normal room) or you can get an inexpensive RCA audio cable which goes from your laptop's headphone jack to your television's audio input.

High-Definition Options

If you are interested in viewing your content in high-definition (come on, who wouldn't want to?) you first need to ask yourself which port is more convenient for you to output the video from - USB or VGA? If you don't have a VGA port available, for instance, the answer is easy (and vice versa).

Both of these products run in the $100-range (though the VGA to HDMI option is a little bit cheaper). You can expect comparable quality with each with a slight advantage to VGA to HDMI because it tends to have less driver issues (it is a more passive conversion than a USB to DVI conversion). In general, though, these will be very close in quality.

Note that neither of these options will handle your audio either, so you will either need to use the computer's speakers or run an audio cable between your computer and television.

One more option - USB to HDMI

There is one option that will handle both audio and video - this is a brand new technology known as USB to HDMI, which is exactly what it sounds like. You connect one end to your computer's USB port and the other to an HDMI-input on the television. Unlike the DVI interface HDMI will actually handle the audio portion.

There are two popular models of the USB to HDMI adapter available today - Grandtec's USB to HDMI (which only requires the USB connection to the computer and handles both audio and video) and Atlona's HDPix USB to HDMI (which requires you connect a USB cable and an audio cable to the adapter, but handles both audio and video out the other end). In general the quality of Atlona's adapter is slightly higher, so what you lose in convenience may be made up for with a smoother audio/video experience.

These adapters are also known as VGA to RCA converters.