How do I view my PC's screen on my TV?

[Rupp]

I was setting here thinking it would be nice to see the radar on TV that I can get on the web. Can someone clue me in on what I would need to accomplish this? My older Dell laptop had TV out I guess I would need a video card with TV out correct? What resolution and I going to get on my everyday (non high def) TV? TIA

[Michael McSharry]

Yes a TV out is needed. The card will also need to run at the TV frequency so it makes for a poor quality image on the monitor, but if it is dedicated to the TV then it will be fine. There is about 240 lines of resolution on a TV and images such as radar will look good. Text or anything with sharp edges will be poor. Expect to run your video at 640x480 for this application.

[Stevech]

I run my HS PC at 800 x 600 pixels. I take the normal monitor connnector (SVGA) and run it into a video converter. This is an $80 item - found on eBay and elsewhere. This box produces NTSC composite on a normal RCA video jack, and it also has an S-video output. In my case, I run the video to the aux-in jack on the family TV set. I have software on the PC which produces many different displays which go to the TV - including a TV program guide, custom-formatted for the TV (big fonts), which scrolls. Also a menu to go to web pages such as web cams around the world. High WAF. An IR receiver at the TV converts IR from the normal TV remote to serial data which goes to the PC. software reacts to what buttons are pushed on teh remote, by changing the display from the PC - scroll the TV program guide, jump to web pages, etc.

You can see the drawing of this setup on

http://childress.d2g.com/newweb/imag...0HA%20dwg1.jpg

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[fireball]

Hi Rupp,
Quite a few video cards have TV outputs (RCA and s-video). There are also stand alone boxes that plug in between the video card and the monitor cable. I've got one of the stand alone boxes for two reasons - I find the performance is a little bit better plus, and this is the really important part, I got one free from work.
All you have to do is run the video interconnect from your PC/box to your TV/receiver and you're good to go.
How good will the quality be? Decent as long as you're not trying to read text which is blurry on my Zenith 36" regular non-hidef TV.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the stand alone box I own is a TView Gold. A little pricey but a bit clearer than most of the video cards with TV outs.

[Michael G]

I have used the All In Wonder Pro V card for some time. Ran slide productions thru s-video with good results and very easy setup. Web page text and like sux though.

[smee]

I thought I'd toss another idea into the mix.

I have a Hauppauge MediaMVP that's hooked up to my A/V receiver. This is one of those boxes that allows you to view pictures and mpeg video and listen to mp3s. It connects to a server running on a pc somewhere (wired ethernet connection).

The reason I bring it up: The user interface on this box is written in html and sits on the server. It is very easy to change (though not always easy to know what to change it to). Someone on the SHS PVR forums has posted a hack which allows you to show web pages through the box. Each of the number buttons on the remote (0 - 9) will cause a different page to be displayed. I have these point to pages served by HomeSeer but they can be anywhere on the web/net.

You can either connect your tv or receiver to this box or run its output to a modulator (for a while, mine was on my "local" channel 103).

Currently, there is no way to navigate on these pages (no mouse, tab, etc.) and no way to scroll them. I have mine pointing to things like weather pages that I have formatted for my Audreys. Unfortunately, the usable resolution on the MVP is less than 640x480. When I get around to it, I'm going to make some custom pages sized just for the MVP.

I think this is a pretty good solution to these kind of situations (where you don't really need a full pc display, just some information). You can get the MediaMVP for $80-$100, typically, so it's pretty cheap to experiment.

Here's the thread on the SHS forums discussing this:
WebFrames Hack
There's a lot of good information in these forums for MVP users.

I posted recently about this on www.cocoontech.com.