no idea what it is?

notwithit??

i want to buy my husband a contraption that lets him watch films on the tv from his pc. i have no idea what it is called or where to buy it from or how much they cost or even if it is compatible?
all i know is we have windows vista and a wireless router.

does antone know what it is i am looking for?

thanks in advance

Radish72

I would try PCWorld as they have that annoying advert on at the moment

Find out all that you would need and then shop around to get the best price

el_gringo_3

what connections has he got on his tv?

I have a fairly old tv with only scart and rf.

I use a 'tv viewer' i bought from Maplins about 4 years ago for 15 or so quid. its a small grey box. You plug your monitor cable into it and it has another cable that leads out of the monitor, and a selction of s-video type outputs.

As my tv has no s-video or svhs (think thats what its called) i needed a further adaptor (can't remember if it was in the package or not - don't think so) which converts the s-video signal into scart. hang on, ill go find the box!

el_gringo_3

its called a trust televiewer v2, its no longer made though looking at google, although they do seem to do newer versions including wireless and remote control ones! It appears it did come with the scart adaptor although i've long since lost that as its a maplins own brand one im using now!

I'd go into Maplins after looking at your tv's selection of inputs and tell them what your after, say they used to do a trust televiwer and ask to see the new models, making sure its compatable with your set. Don't worry about your version of windows as these things don't actually interact at all with your pc, they are purely hardware connections - so if your husband set the tv up in the first place, he'll easily figure this out.

You can also buy various graphics cards, video converors that fit into the pc, but they need a bit of know how to fit, you need to open the pc up and check what slots it has.... far too much bother for what you want.

Strider590

You need a TV card for the PC, try Amazon, Dabs, play.com, etc etc.

A quick search on play.com found an analogue TV card for £45.
You can get TV + radio cards, digital TV cards and analogue TV cards.

PC world will probably be twice as expensive, and the sales staff will probably try to sell you a special deal on a PC with a TV card already installed, preying of course on people's fear of doing this stuff for themselves.
It's a dead easy install on any PC!!!
But I must point out that it'll only work on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, etc due to DX requirements.

Showing the installation of a TV card (they're all the same)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWox5-fviws

On a final note.... As far as I know, "Hauppauge" still make the best TV cards.

mr_fishbulb

Do these things work OK with wireless routers? Or is there interference?

Gordon861

If I'm reading the OP correctly, and you want to play files that are currently on your PC on your TV so you can be more relaxed watching them.

I think what you are looking for is called a Media Streamer.

It connects to your home network (either wireless or with wires) and streams the data from a shared folder on your PC.
I have one of these : http://www.dabs.com/products/freecom-ntw-mediaplayer450-wlan-kit-sata-4zv9.html
These aren't cheap but seem to play the most common formats.

There are other items that do the same thing but I can't say how good they are. You want to make sure that the unit you buy will also play DivX files as that is probably the most common format for downloadables right now.

This type of thing will work for downloadable TV Shows/Movies etc (non-DRM) but it will probably not work with the BBC iPlayer files if that is what you want to display.

edit : re-reading the OP I might be getting this round the wrong way and then everyone else is reading the post right, in which case Hauppauge is definately the company to look for.

Strider590

Oh, well there's two way the OP could have been taken lol

If this is the case, have a bit of a look through recent threads on this forum.

notwithit??

gordon 861 you are right! we usually sit and watch stuff on a 19" monitor sitting in the hall! (thats where the pc is, under the stairs) it would be better if we could sit on the settee in the lounge and watch it in there. i have had a read through some of the threads and googled the media streamer,but its all gobbledygook to me! LOL:rotfl:

thanks for all your replies, very interesting to be able to do it other way round too.

notwithit??

just a quick Q, does it need to have a hard drive, that freecom thing?
i have seen one on a well known auction site that has no hard drive, and it very cheap.

Dabooka

Just on the off chance you have one, PS3s can do this already.