In the beginning...
In the beginning there was only the TV, if you wanted to watch TV you sat on your couch and enjoyed a show. With the invention of the remote control, you didn't even have to get up to change the channel. Then, the computer was born and for a long time, TV still reigned supreme in the living room, until 1993-1994 the invention of the DVD turned the PC into a viable video option. Since then we have come leaps and bounds from having only our TV as our video source. Your computer can play high end games, display amazing HD video content on demand -- a functionality the TV alone is hard pressed to beat.
All that to say, that whatever your reason for wanting to display your PC's contents on your TV screen I will address it here in this page. If you are only looking to share and display your video's or you are looking to play Quake on your 42" plasma, we'll go over the options.
Media Extenders, TV outputs, dual monitor outputs, old TV's, new TV's, whatever content you want wherever you want it is the goal. In order to interconnect and display your PC on your TV screen, we will need to identify the different types of connections that can be used.
HDMI
HDMI- (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is the king of common household video standards today. Capable of carrying HD video signal and digital surround sound audio at the same time most digital TV's purchased since approximately 2003, and just about all since 2007 should have one or more of these inputs.
HDMI is a digital signal, and normally carries BOTH audio and video via the same cable. This is great, except when we are converting from HDMI to another connection type. You can see the HDMI -> DVI adapter to the left, this works great for displaying a device that outpus HDMI on a monitor or older TV that only has DVI inputs, but as stated before, HDMI carries both audio and video and DVI only video, so when we convert we now have to find a new way to input audio.
DVI and VGA
VGA/SVGA is a common connection types found on both monitors and some televisions. The VGA standard has been around for years and years, so it is a very common easy to find cable and connector.
DVI is another failry common format. Many computer video cards use DVI as output, this is convenient for us with HDTV's as DVI -> HDMI cables are fairly inexpensive, and offer very good video quality opitons. Do keep in mind that DVI is a video only signal and does not carry audio, so if we convert from DVI -> HDMI we have to send audio via another route.
