Best way to use my HDTV as a monitor with my Vostro 1500

I'd like to start using my HDTV as a monitor with my Vostro, and I'm trying to find the configuration that will provide the best video quality.

Right now I'm using an s-video cable and frankly, it's too low-res.

I recently bought a TV that has a VGA-input, so that's an option, but I've also read online that I could actually buy an s-video to component cable, which would be more useful for me because there might be times when I might want to use my laptop on tvs that don't have a VGA-input.

This is the cable: DELL S-Video to TV-Component and SPDIF Adapter for XPS M1710

Would using this cable actually display video in an HD resolution even though the output is from an SD s-video source?

If so, which cable would provide better quality video: the aforementioned s-video to component, or the VGA cable?

If it matters, I have a GeForce 8400M GS.

 

The S-video will probably still be your bottleneck, but if not, you would also have to spend money.

VGA will be your best bet, either VGA to VGA, or VGA to HDMI.

 

there is no such thing as vga to HDMI


VGA will be your best choice as you are limited by your notebooks output

 

You could most likely go VGA to DVI though. I have had some notebook outputs not like that cable but others work fine.

In any case with svideo you're talking 480i...overscan.. blurry text... crappy colors... pretty much unusable. You would need to use like a 26pt font for it to appear clean and then at 640x480 you would get about 10 characters on the screen.