Adapter for using laptop as TV monitor?

I just bought a Sony Vaio FE, and i was wondernig if i could buy like a USB adapter that would let me watch Cable TV on the screen and even plug in my Ps2. I am wondering cuz i wanna use this as my TV while in dorms next year.

I might even hook up my 19" LCD monitor to my laptop and watch tv on that.

 

Yes you can, You just need a TV tuner, You might need a digital one for cable TV but im not sure, I have the Avermedia Hybrid card it does both analoge and digital, they have RCA and S-video inputs so you can plug the PS2 into it easily.

 

Do plenty of research before you buy though, most TV tuners are not fast enough to play video games on your laptop screen. I have played splinter cell on my laptop trhough my ATI, but it was a little choppy.

 

Ive played Many PS2 games through mine and there is absolutly no lag though this is a upper range one, Alot of the cheap ones have really bad lag issues.

 

I bought a avermedia cardbus and that thing seems to not work properly on my ms-1039, becuase it shuts off after a couple of minutes or so. But im in the same situation as him becuase im returning that avermedia. Anyways, people seemed to mentioned to get a pcmcia card instead of usb, becuase they run quicker.

 

Thats correct if your using USB your going to get Lag, I have the same notebook as Storm9 so if it dosent have any issues with my machine its unlikly it would with his. I would recomend getting a ExpressCard tuner if you can, They are the fastest available and have 2.5GB/s bandwidth which is neccasary for HD signals. Unfortunatly the FE only has a expresscard/34 slot which makes it difficult to get a hybrid that will do Analoge (needed for RCA and S-vid) and Digital (for digi TV) Avermedia had one in the works but I havent heard anything about it in a while.

 

Actually HD OTA doesn't require that much bandwidth that an ExpressCard tuner would be absolutely preferred. HD OTA (8VSB) requires 19.2Mb/s of bandwidth, well within the 480Mb/s bandwidth of USB2.0 highspeed. For digital cable, which uses QAM, it would be even less because cable requires much less error correction. Two HD QAM signals will fit in the same space as an 8VSB signal. An analog signal will actually require significantly more bandwidth, once digitized, than an HD signal because it will be uncompressed. The only exception would be if you buy a tuner that has a hardware MPEG encoder. As for lag all the analog converters will have some lag some more than others it depends on the quality of the AV encoder in the tuner.

For the OP checkout avsforum.com they have a HTPC section which might provide better answers to your question.

 

Hi Storm9,

I've used the Avermedia card on an ultraportable Fujitsu P7120.

It didn't seem to have the shutting down problem as you did...
I do not have American cable here though...

 

o, so tv tuner uses usb? i thought it uses dvi. hm..