Hooking your computer to the SDTV is only viable these days if you want to use your PC as a DVD player. You should use hi-definition TVs such as LCD, Plasma, LED displays as these TVs work as excellent monitors for computers as they have a very high resolution and refresh rate.
There is more than just hooking the computer and TV together apart from resolution as we need to transfer the information or output provided by your computer to the TV and for that we need a connecter which connects both the machines. There are many types of audio video cables available in the market and before selecting one of them, you need to find out which kind of audio video output both the devices contain. The common video output you get on a computer is S-video jack which you will find on the graphics card which is a 9 pin jack next to the monitor port. Some Windows based laptops come with the S-video out jack but most of them have a 15 pin VGA connectors which are used to connect external output device. This is not a matter of concern as we can easily buy the adapters and special cables.
For the TVs which only have coaxial video cable connectivity (used to connect the antenna, Cable TV or DTH connection), there is something known as RF converter box which converts a VGA input to a coaxial output. Similarly you may need to buy a converter if your computer does not have the output jack which your TV supports. This was about sending the video output to a TV. For audio, you can easily attach some audio speakers to the computer and if you want to use the speaker of your TV or to a home theatre, you need to buy a stereo mini plug to RCA cable. You can also invest in an audio card for the computer which provides both optical as well as coaxial audio output.
You can also connect both the devices wirelessly by purchasing Wireless USB PC to TV/Projector Display Adapter Kit which works for both video as well as audio. Even if you have got everything right, there are some problems which you may face while connecting or displaying the output to the TV correctly. The problem like overscan, where your TV screen does not display the full screen of your computer is a problem mainly related to the SDTVs. You can fix this problem by lowering the screen resolution to 800X600. While most of the HDTVs are able to scale their incoming signal in order to match the screen resolution of your computer output by using either upconverting or downconverting, there can still be a bit loss in the image quality and to solve these minor problems you can try a program named PowerStrip for Windows which enables you in matching the resolution of your graphics card with the resolution of your TV. If the problem persists, you can visit any website dealing with online tech support and get your problems resolved with their state of the art
remote tech support.
