[W] Connect a Laptop Computer To Your Television Screen

Connect a Laptop Computer To Your Television Screen

While it is possible to display the contents of your computer screen on the TV, you may not be very happy with the overall picture quality and the text is not very readable.



If that is no concern, here’s how to connect your computer to a Television set (we used an HP Tablet Vista computer and a Sony Bravia HDTV for this example)

1. First you need a video cable for making the physically connection.

Most computers have an S-Video port that can be connected to the S-Video input of your TV screen using a very cheap S-Video cable (it’s round with 4 or 7 pins).



For better picture quality, you should connect the computer to the TV using standard VGA ports or via the DVI to HDMI cable provided your TV supports these ports.

2. Open the "Display Settings" in your Vista computer and activate output to the TV screen. You can either mirror content of your computer on the TV or extend the display just like a dual monitor screen.



3. Pick up your TV remote and switch to "External Inputs" from the menu. You will need to change the default "Video 1" to a different selection which may be "HDMI 1" or "Video 2" depending on how you have made the connection.

Important: Make sure you connect the cable to the TV before turning on the computer as sometimes it may fail to recognize external display.

You may also need to change the screen resolution of your TV using the Display settings in your Control Panel else the picture may appear distorted.


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