Connecting your Computer to your HDTV

Now that the 21st Century is here, we expect more out of our gadgets than we used to. No longer is a phone just a phone; it's also a camera, a web browser, and for some people, a tiny movie theater. So naturally, a 21st Century TV ought to be more than just a TV.

Since the new HDTVs use digital input, they can accept the digital output from your computer, turning them into super-size monitors for your living room, doing a far better job than the TV you hooked up to your Commodore 64 in the 80s. An HDTV won't necessarily add more work space than a cheap extra monitor, though, because the most resolution you will get out of it is 1920 x 1080, only slightly more than a good computer monitor. So why do it? Here are some reasons:

• To share digital photos with an entire room
• To multi-task, watching TV and browsing the Web during commercials
• Show a PowerPoint presentation to coworkers
• Access your music library easily during a party
• Just because you can

There are some details, though. Since this is still a fairly uncommon thing to do, it's not always easy, or even possible, to get everything working just right. Problems include a blurry image, the wrong size image, unreadable text and icons, and worst of all, permanent damage to your HDTV! So read on...

Making a good connection is basically a question of making sure certain things match up between your computer and your HDTV. These things are the type of interface, and the resolution.

Type of Interface
In the best case scenario, you'll have a port (VGA, DVI, or component) on your computer that also exists on the TV, so you'll just need that type of cable to connect them, and it will probably come with the TV. Here are pictures of the different ports:

DVI is basically the new, digital version of the VGA connection, and it will give you the highest quality possible from your computer, so use it if you have it. If the TV only has HDMI inputs, you can use a DVI to HDMI or a VGA to HDMI adapter to connect. And if you have VGA on the computer and component inputs on the TV, there's an adapter for that too. If you have one of the new Media Center PCs, you may have an HDMI port on the computer and one on the HDTV, so you can simply use an HDMI cable to connect the two.

Resolution
Here's where you might be able to damage your HDTV, so be careful. Basically, you have to find a resolution that is supported by both the computer and the TV, and use that. Set the resolution in the computer before hooking up the cable, making sure it is listed as a supported resolution in the HDTV manual. If the only common resolution isn't very appealing, you can set a custom resolution to match the HDTV's native resolution using some special software: PC users will need Powerstrip and Mac users will need DisplayConfigX. Be sure to match the frame rate in the custom setup to the frame rate of the TV.

Now that you have connected your laptop to your HDTV, you're closer to true 21st Century technology, but you're not quite there. What about all those wires? They are so 20th Century. So, you might want to try the Ultimate Wireless system, a device that looks like two wireless routers and beams your computer output across the room to your HDTV. It accepts VGA or Macintosh input from your computer, and sends it to the composite or S-Video inputs (which only carry standard definition, unfortunately) on your HDTV, at resolutions up to 1600x1200. Not the highest quality interface, but hey, at least it's wireless.

Be sure not to sit too close to your HDTV when using it as a computer monitor- the picture will not look very sharp up close, so just sit where you normally would to watch TV. If you are using an application such as Windows Media center, you can use a 10-foot GUI (Graphical User Interface), which enlarges the icons and enables you to use a remote instead of a mouse.