What do I need?

[ingeborgdot]

We recently purchased a TV for the front entrance of our school to show slideshows of the activities and things going on in the classroom, sports, music etc. It has the usb option on the side and the slideshow option the TV handles but I am not impressed with that. At this point the video I have on the usb drive will not work and there are videos that are really cool that I would like to go along with the pictures. I would like to make cool slide shows in my pro show producer program but I don't think they will work. Is there a device that will stream usb to the component inputs or even the HDMI inputs? That is what I would really like to see. Thanks.

 

[NutBucket]

Unfortunately your best option is probably to just hook up a computer. I'm sure that isn't what you wanted to hear.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Unfortunately your best option is probably to just hook up a computer. I'm sure that isn't what you wanted to hear.

Or, maybe a bit less costly, hook up a cheapo dvd player and convert your slideshows to mpeg2 and then author them on dvd

However, that would require dvd authoring which can be a pain in the backside...

 

[ingeborgdot]

What about the new Roku?

 

[JoeBleed]

If you change your content often, using a computer is probably a better solution. (edit: any old computer that can play your slide show will work if you can get it to output to which ever converter box that would work for you. Doesn't need to be high end)

As for the videos not playing, see what tight specifications your tv requires them to match and see if you can convert them.

If you think you may want to put up a few more tvs throughout your school showing the same thing, then a computer will be best. We do that here at work, we have 4 tvs setup in different places in the plant. The computer plays a power point slide show using the power point viewer software. The computer outputs that to a converter box to coax cable that we have running to the tvs. We change that slide show everyday M-F.

If you go this route or any other route, you'll want to try and keep the slide backgrounds different and change them to help keep the screens from suffering image burn. Playing videos during the presentation should help.

The thing i'd like to change about our setup is change the last two analog crt monitors to 720p displays and then change the converter box so i can output native resolution over the coax to the tvs. But the only way we'll replace them is when they die.