donron

Looking for advice on reasonably priced way to connect a PC to a TV set to allow viewing DVD, Photos etc. from the PC. Can this be done with ~same quality as if you used a DVD player? ...at a resonable cost? How about viewing JPEGs? playing MP3s?

A possible alternative I'm also considering is something like the "Iomega 60GB ScreenPlay" Portable Media Player. It's not a direct connection from a PC, but it could be useful to use while traveling and perhaps also serve as a good backup to download SD flash cards from a camera to free up the cards for more pictures.

Any ideas/advice on this? What do you use for this purpose?

Thanks, donron

PTravel

I'm also interested in the answer to this. I've never found a good solution for getting video out of a laptop.

YVR Cockroach

Presumably you're talking laptops as you can get desktop graphic cards with s-video and HDMI/DVI outputs.

This may be solution for laptops:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814100010

PTravel

I just assumed laptops. I push video from my home desktop to our television with a graphics card that has an s-video output -- works great.

donron

Yes, you're right I was talking about a laptop. I checked out the link to the adapter... that is the sort of adapter I'm looking for, but the reviews sure don't sound very good for the quality of picture you get with that one.

Anyone know of (or have used) an adapter that gives good quality images?

I'm starting to think that a seperate "Media Player" (like the Iomega 60GB ScreenPlay I mentioned in the first posting), might be better. Looks like you can download all the types of media files to it and then connect it to a TV. Might even be more practical since it's much smaller & more easily taken along on trips.

Does anyone have experience with the Iomega ScreenPlay or other similar portable media players?

Do they work well...? Good results?

Thanks for the input guys.

YVR Cockroach

I've seen smaller adapters/ This one might well be worth taking a risk on for $10.

http://www.computercasesandcables.com/ccc/CV-25120

http://cgi.ebay.com/VGA-to-TV-conver...QQcmdZViewItem

PTravel

From the eBay ad: "It will work with VGA cards that has TV-Out function capability through the VGA connector."

Most laptop graphics cards don't have this.

SpaceBass

I use Mac Minis on our TVs and they work very well. They have a DVI port which plays well with HD TVs and you can get $20 adapters from apple for S-Video or composite video. Its an expensive media player but they really fit the bill nicely. They are capable of resolutions as high as 1080p too.