PCMCIA TV-tuner Card

MrD

Hi all, I'm wanting to purchase a tv-tuner card for my laptop. I'm wanting to watch the training videos I own on my tv, thru my laptop, and that will be the only use for it. I just don't feel like converting all of my vid's to "real" dvd format. What's the cheapest way to go here?

bighornsheep

sounds like you're actually looking for a tv-box adapter for tv out. ie. you want to be able play a video from your laptop and have it shown on your tv?

a tv tunner will allow you to plug video devices like vcr, dvd player, xbox, or cable tv into your laptop.

bighornsheep

if your laptop doesnt have video out on composite/s-video port, and your tv doesnt have a vga port, you might want to check out something like this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=674680&CatId=1427

MrD

Thanks for the input. My laptop does have an s-video port. Both of my tv's have an s-video port as well. So, do I just need to connect them via an s-video cable? What type of software do I need? Thanks.

bighornsheep

you can just get a s-video cable from your local electronics store.

Plug in both ends, and enable tv-out on your graphics card.
right click your desktop, properties, settings, advanced, and if you have ATI chipset, there should be a display tab. If it's nvidia, there should be a tab with the name of your graphics card.

Some graphics card may not be able to render videos to both your laptop tft display, and the tv out port, so if there's an option to 'make this display the primary', set that on for the s-video while you're plugged into the tv.

good luck~

MrD

Great. Thanks for the help! I love cheap solutions

Humper

Genious! I will pick one of these up as well!

MrD

Ok, I finally got around to trying it out; first on my big screen and then on my 32" tv. The big screen was utterly useless due to the lack of clarity, and the 32" wasn't much better. I'm thinking this due to lack of kickin' video card? Please advise. Thanks.

bighornsheep

turn down the refresh rate, and increase the DPI on the font size. From experience, 800x600 @ 72Hz, 120DPI works well for upto 37 inch tvs.