VGA out from laptop to a TV. Possible?

[Shark1959]

I'm looking at the possibilty of hooking up my new, inexpensive Gateway laptop with XP home edtion to my home theatre TV. The only video output from my laptop is VGA. The TV is the Sony KDF60WF655 with a number of different video inputs, all the way up to and including HDMI. Is this senario possible, so that I can view all aspects of the laptop on my jumbo screen? I've heard about converters that can do this. If so what are some of the better ones to look at?

Thanks in advance to all who reply.

Jack

 

[peleejosh]

i have done it with a Pioneer Plasma tv and my compaq laptop before, so yes its possible.

 

[Shark1959]

Thanks for the quick replay peleejosh. Can you tell me where to look or what you used to complete this task? What were the results like?

Thanks again for your reply.

Jack

 

[Bish]

If your TV has a VGA input, you connect with a standard vga cable. If your tv does not have vga input, you need composite output (1 yellow rca cable) for it to work along with red and white for L&R audio. Many laptops have SVideo output via a dongle that plugs into a jack on your laptop and has connections for Svideo and L&R audio.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bish
If your tv does not have vga input, you need composite output (1 yellow rca cable) for it to work along with red and white for L&R audio. Many laptops have SVideo output via a dongle that plugs into a jack on your laptop and has connections for Svideo and L&R audio.

Ugh. Both those will look like crap, and limit you to ~640x480.

If you have an HDTV, you can get an external VGA->Component transcoder (if you have an ATI onboard video card, you may be able to get a dongle from them that doesn't cost as much). This will let you put out HD resolutions over component, which most HDTVs will display.

 

[Bish]

Good suggestion on the vga-component transcoder. VGA does not necessarilly limit you to 640x480 as I have used HD resolutions through VGA on my Mits DLP. I get better picture quality using component and/or DVI but it is definitely way better than 640/480.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bish
Good suggestion on the vga-component transcoder. VGA does not necessarilly limit you to 640x480 as I have used HD resolutions through VGA on my Mits DLP. I get better picture quality using component and/or DVI but it is definitely way better than 640/480.

Sorry if that was unclear; VGA should be fine (DVI/HDMI would be better, but VGA is still capable of HD resolutions). It's S-Video/RCA that will look like crap, especially on an HDTV.