Connecting my laptop to my television?

I'm not sure if I should put this question in here or in the video cards section but I would like to be able to hook my laptop up to my tv so i can watch movies and stuff I download. I have a LCD TV and my laptop is a Dell D630..

thanks!

 

Same thing I am looking for I have IBM T61 with one firewire port.

 

You have to buy a HDMI cable.

 

I'm by no means a tech, but as long as your laptop and TV both have HDMI ports you should be able to just plug in the HDMI cable and the computer will automatically detect the television. Sometimes when I hook mine up I have to right click on the desktop or go to display properties before it recognizes it, but I'm stuck with an S-video plug on my current laptop.

EDIT: I just looked up your laptop model and it looks like you don't have an HDMI port? In that case, you will need a VGA to HDMI or DVI adapter. There are a bunch on Newegg for a few bucks each.

 

Nope, VGA to HDMI via one cable is not possible, he needs a converter box for that.
And it's not a few bucks.

 

Or you could connect via VGA if your TV has a VGA input.

Correct, they do offer HDMI/DVI to VGA cables, but all that does is take the analog VGA that most/some Graphics cards output to a section of the HDMI/DVI port to a VGA plug. There is no basic (i.e. cheap) cable that will actually convert a digital HDMI/DVI signal to an analog VGA signal or vice-versa.

 

Firewire won't let you connect it to a TV. Firewire is not used for TV-out or such.

Your computer needs:
VGA, S-video, Composit, DVI or HDMI as any of these ports is needed to hook up to an external source if you wish to extend the picture to do whatever you want, watch movies or surf the web etc.

And then ofcourse you need the source to have an input of same such thing.
If your TV for example does have DVI or HDMI, you ned a computer which has DVI or HDMI, or else you need a pretty expensive solution for the analog signal to be converted (analog is s-video, composit or VGA) and cannot just be converted into vice versa as they are totally different signals.

 

My laptop doesn't have any of those ports unfortunately : (.. any suggestions on what to get ?

 

I'm 90% sure your laptop has a 7-pin (Or the 9-pin I think ATI cards use) "S-video" port that will let you run HDTV out to component.

Here's an example of the port I'm talking about:

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/5707/dell1500rearportslt9.jpg

Even my ancient circa-2004 Inspiron 5150 had one:

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/2815/laptop004yl6.jpg

It'll get you 1080i to an HDTV.

Edit: Apparently it doesn't even have that video port... VGA is your only option.

 

Yes it has? It has VGA, doesn't it? But then you need VGA on your TV ofcourse. And i guess you have a very old LCD TV which uses scart or s-video/composite? But usualy LCD TV's do have VGA-in on the back. What's the name of your LCD TV?

 

this is the back of my laptop.. so i dont think it has a vga.. my computer is a dynex.. i got it in dec so its pretty new

 

As i said, yes it does have VGA As the man above my post stated, that first port is a VGA-out!

 

ah gotcha thanks. my tv has that port also.. im gonna try and get a cable and see how it works..

thanks!

 

Yea, that's what i tought (and stated) as it would be very strange if it didn't have it

Just get a standard VGA-cable, and it'll work fine for ya, picture quality will be great!

 

i have a camera box which is connected to a Goodmans tv i want to download the pictures from the tv to my lap top. all the connections that i have looked at seem to be laptop to tv and not tv to laptop.

 

Wouldnt laptop to tv be the same as tv to laptop?

Are you trying to connect the camera box to laptop?

 

Most LCD TVs have a VGA input now that tv makers finally realized that people would want to do that. Like 4 years ago when I was getting an LCD there were so many tvs that did not have vga inputs, but now almost all lcds will have one.
Its an easy hookup.
As far as transferring camera pictures to tv to laptop, vga cable is not really the way to go. You should use a USB cable most likely to your laptop from your camera.