5 replies to this topic

[scapes]

I seriously couldn't decide where to post this as it didnt really seem to fit in any of the forum areas quite right, so here it is.

Here's my problem, that I'm hoping for a suggested solution to.

My XP Media Center lives in the living room, but I often wish I could watch files of various formats from it, in the bedroom. I have a laptop I don't really use any more, so I've resurrected that and it can happily grab files from the Media Center via wireless network, but it's not much fun watching anything on a pokey little laptop screen, let alone the pokier sounding speakers.

So I'd like some kind of a connection solution between the laptop and the bedroom TV, to kind of give me a defacto Media Center Extender (emphasis on Kind Of).

The laptop has outputs: VGA for external monitor, and Firewire, as well as headphone jack.

The TV has direct inputs in component only. No VGA. I do have a DVD-Recorder I could put in between if need be which has S-Video, SCART etc I think, but I'd prefer to avoid that if possible as there is little chance it would be used as anythign other than part of the conversion process, so seems a pain to have to deal with an extra remote, not to mention wasted electricity.

I found on Ebay a lot of vendors selling cheap VGA to S-video/Component - now it seemed to me that would only provide a vide solution at best, but if it worked I could maybe get some relatively cheap but acceptable speakers to plug in to the laptop if need be. So I bought one for a few dollars that converts VGA output to both s-video and component, and tried it (the component part) today, but couldn't get the TV to work as an external monitor on the laptop at all. I'm thinking maybe there is VGA and then there is VGA with TV Out and I don't have it ... or something like that.

So I'm all out of ideas and turning to the experts :-)

What would be your cheap but workable solutions?

[colpeady]

Hi Scapes,

Have you tried hooking up a spare monitor to your laptop's VGA? It's possible that VGA out is disabled - there's usually a function key that allows you to turn the output on.

[scapes]

Thanks for your reply.

Hmmmm - no I haven't tried it. I do remember hooking the laptop up to a second monitor way back when the laptop was my main working machine (2005), but don't recall if anything special was needed. I'll give it a go and see what happens.

[scapes]

OK, I tried it with a monitor and it worked just fine. So I left it setup for dual monitor, then transferred the laptop back to the TV in the bedroom - blank screen. Then as soon as I made a change to the setup (resolution) of the secondary monitor, it automatically disabled it. It just doesn't seem to like TV's. Might be I need to use a computer monitor instead of a TV in there (unfortunately I don't have a spare one let alone a decent spare one).

[redwards10]

I tried one of those VGA to S-video/RCA plugs on my laptop some time ago - no good.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "there is VGA and then there is VGA with TV Out".

Some of the eBay listings say you need to check whether your video hardware supports VGA out in that way. Not sure what you're running, so I can't comment on that.

I never found a cheap and easy solution for hooking the lappy to a TV - hence now putting a HTPC together!

[scapes]

Yeah - I never found a way to convert that firewire out to RCA, so I've come to the conclusion that the realistic option is to buy a LCD monitor. But they are getting cheaper and cheaper, so I'm just watching out for bargains.