SuperCop Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 hey guys, i wanted some help in here. i have a fairly old tv in my house which does not have a vga socket as most new tv's have, i wanted to use my tv as my monitor. Please help me out on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 hey guys, i wanted some help in here. i have a fairly old tv in my house which does not have a vga socket as most new tv's have, i wanted to use my tv as my monitor. Please help me out on this. If it's a CRT it's useless as a monitor. They not have the resolution or the sharpness required to be usable as a monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L337G33K Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 Yeah CRTs are useless for use as computer monitor.You cannot read the text displayed because the resolution is too low..But still you can watch movies and play games on the TV.I've done that a lot of times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 Grab a graphics card with TV out (most modern cards from ATi or nVidia) and... ...the TV should have a SCART (21 pin rectangle) or S-Video (PS/2-like circle) input. If it doesn't, composite (the round yellow one) will suffice for watching movies, and if it doesn't have any of those then it's really not worth the effort or cost to use it. It's not impossible, you could buy an RF modulator which will convert the video card's TV-out into a signal you can feed right into the antenna socket on the TV but the quality will be very poor. The graphics card's TV-out will likely be a small, black and round PS/2-like connector. This is usually S-Video or a variation on it (extra pins for manufacturer-specific cables and extended functionality). Connecting the TV to the graphics card is usually a fairly simple affair, connect the appropriate video cable (see above) between the TV and the PC's graphics card along with adapters if required. Also connect audio (the red and white round connectors, same as the yellow composite connector) from your soundcard, you'll probably need a 3.5mm stereo to 2x RCA cable for this, connect it from your sound card's line out to your TV's line/audio/AV input. If you do have SCART (unlikely, unless you're in Western Europe), you'll probably need a SCART to S-Video/composite/2xRCA (for stereo audio) adapter and to connect everything, do as above and ensure that if the adapter has a switch, it's set to "input" rather than "output". As has been mentioned though, don't expect miracles, it's going to be blurry and it's going to be low resolution. Fine for watching standard definition movies or TV shows on but your desktop is probably going to look like a blurry mess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darkwolf Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 I used a 19 inch tv for a while for my laptop and as everyone said is sucks but it works enough depending on what you plan to do. I was lucky enough to have an S-video out on my laptop and ran that to an RF modulator and ran coax from that to the tv. I would have gone straight to the tv except it didnt support s-video input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhollyMindless Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 Most older tv's are generally 640x480 with massive overscan so using it as a monitor is really tough. Now, sending winamp output to it (MST3K) is totally the right thing to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADM1NX Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 An old TV may not be good for something with small text, such as web browsing, but for some games, you can get by. I use a tv that has s-video input for my Stepmania machine, and even though the tv itself is blurry, it works ok enough so i can play.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 TV's as monitors are really only good for movies and graphics. Reading fonts and text is not the greatest, and I have an HDTV with an HDMI cable to my GPU. Its sharp and clear for video and makes pictures look great, but fonts and text on the GUI are hard to read. TV's just werent meant to be computer rmonitors. Even when I use the VGA cable(which also reduces my maximum pixel width and height) it still does not look as clear as my pc monitor. Best bet, get a large pc monitor that has either HDMI or DVI inputs(With converting cables from HDMI source or composite) and use it as the tv instead of the other way around(You will need a sperate tv tuner though like a cable box, unless your PC has a TV/Cable/HDTV Tuner card, which in that case works fine). This way both your pc and tv look clear and you can read everything on both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted January 26, 2009 Share Posted January 26, 2009 I have a 22" HDTV LCD running at 1650 x 1050 and its pretty much the same quality as a cheap lcd monitor. Same with the 50" 1080p plasma I briefly used as a monitor at work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted January 26, 2009 Share Posted January 26, 2009 I have a 22" HDTV LCD running at 1650 x 1050 and its pretty much the same quality as a cheap lcd monitor. Same with the 50" 1080p plasma I briefly used as a monitor at work. thats sort of an odd resolution for an HDTV. most hd tv's i've seen have a native resolution of 1366x768 or 1920x1080 for 1080p sets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted January 26, 2009 Share Posted January 26, 2009 I think it is literally a cheap LCD monitor with a digital tv reciver mated to it. http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.205-7588.aspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h3%5kr3w Posted January 26, 2009 Share Posted January 26, 2009 I think it is literally a cheap LCD monitor with a digital tv reciver mated to it. http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.205-7588.aspx most probably.. Though I will say this, if you have a less than great gaming pc, the lower resolution *though hard to read text* of a tv makes games in lower res look WAY more awesome than on a monitor, mainly due to interlacing, as it can sorta add a fake anti-aliasing like effect. btw, if your into computer/audio visuals DEFINITELY DO WINAMP WITH R4 (you can get r4 here: Rabbid Hamster's R4 BTWW- Also it works GREAT with ANY newer video card, even really cheap intel gma's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted January 26, 2009 Share Posted January 26, 2009 Milkdrop is still the best (by a *long* way) visualization for Winamp, only one i've seen that actually matches the music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted January 26, 2009 Share Posted January 26, 2009 I have a 22" HDTV LCD running at 1650 x 1050 and its pretty much the same quality as a cheap lcd monitor. Same with the 50" 1080p plasma I briefly used as a monitor at work. Are you using the HDMI cable, or the VGA cable? Because my picture quality and resolutions are different depending on the cable used. I get a funky 1366x768 on vga but 1920x1080 on HDMI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted January 27, 2009 Share Posted January 27, 2009 I think it is literally a cheap LCD monitor with a digital tv reciver mated to it. http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.205-7588.aspx + http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.205-7588.aspx + http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/26/atom-po...-ride-your-lcd/ + Windows 7 Ultimate + MCE remote = <3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tactix Posted January 30, 2009 Share Posted January 30, 2009 im using a 42" lcd hd tv at 720p via a dvi to hdmi cable on an ati hd2400 ( bought it just for x264 hardware decoding ) before setting ie to ignore font sizes specified on webpages it was a nightmare as i felt i was going cross eyed trying to focus on the text i know ie sucks buit its the only browser ive found that lets me have the option of overiding specified font size but im writing this messsage now sat about 9 foot from the screen with no problems how ever that doesnt solve the font settings out of browsing but you can solve that by upping the dpi in your display settings as the standard windows settings of 96 dpi is to small but 120 is to big so go for something custom that suits your needs oh and xbmc FTW Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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