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A few weeks ago I bought a 40″ Sony HDTV and so I connected my Laptop to it, now I have a 40″ Monitor instead of a 15″ screen, and it looks amazing. Viewing images, browsing the internet and watching DVDs are fantastic on a 40″ screen.

I found it quite easy to set up, so I thought I would show you how.
The great thing is that you can also use a PC if you want to.
Firstly I would recommend that you read the manufactures instructions as this will show you what and where all the connections are on your HDTV.
Although this is a 40″ screen you will not get as high a resolution as a 40″ pc monitor, because HDTVs support different screen resolutions, (read your HDTV instructions for more info.)

Buying a 40″ HDTV is much cheaper than buying a large PC monitor, which is great news for your pocket.

My Laptop is 3 years old, which means you don’t need to have the latest gear to connect to your HDTV, but not all devices may be compatible. If in doubt do a Google search to see if your Laptop/PC and HDTV are compatible, or speak to your local computer shop.

Here is how I did it:

1. To connect your Laptop/PC to your HDTV you can use a few different types of cable, I used a VGA cable, they are cheap and the picture quality is very good.

You can buy these cables at your local computer shop or online, just remember you need it to have a male connector on each end.

The other type of cable you can use is a DVI to HDMI, but only if your Laptop/PC has a DVI port.

These cables are more expensive than VGA cables and the picture quality is supposed to be better. I have not tried one of these cables so don’t know how much better the quality will be.

2. Now that you have your Laptop/PC connected to your HDTV switch them both on, at this point you will need to switch your HDTV to PC mode, (take look at your HDTV instructions on how to do this.)
You may find that your Laptop/PC desktop may not appear on screen just yet, even though you have your HDTV set to PC mode, it all depends on your graphic card. Every graphic card is different and you will need to look at the instructions that came with your Laptop/PC. If you don’t have them then do a Google search.

My Laptop has an Intel Graphics Extreme card, and to get the picture to come on to my HDTV, I right clicked on the Intel icon on the taskbar and choose Graphic Options > Output to > Monitor. It was that simple, I then played around until I got the right resolution.
It took around half an hour.
For some Laptop/PCs you may need to click Start > Control Panel and then click on your graphic card.

If you are unable to get your desktop to show on you HDTV don’t give up, have a bit of patience and try changing the resolution to 800 x 600 first and then go up from that.

Give it a try and let me know how you get on.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm and is filed under PC Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.