External hard drives with TV out...?

torizia

Hi everyone
I'm moving away next week and have been looking into ways to watch films at my new house without taking my DVD collection. Initially I was planning on buying cables to connect my Mac to my TV, but I've now discovered that I could store the files on an external hard drive which connects directly to the TV. Please can you tell me what I should be looking for e.g. in terms of brand and size, and if it's all pretty straightforward!
Thanks for any advice
Toria x

fwor

I guess you could look at the latest "media tanks" such as the Popcorn Hour, which has an option to have a local hard disk.

However, if your Mac has the ability to connect to a TV, you would be paying for that twice, so maybe just an additional external hard disk would be more cost-effective?

torizia

Thanks for the quick response! I wasn't sure whether it would cost more to purchase the leads to connect my mac and a standard external hard drive rather than just getting a single drive with TV out...do you think I'd be better off just doing that then? If so, do you know which leads I would require?
Thank you again and sorry for being such a techie novice!

magyar

Which Mac do you have? (And by the way, if you're in Bath, pop to Farpoint in Walcot St, they're Mac experts and very helpful).

And what connections does your TV have? Is it a high-def TV? If so it probably has HDMI. If not it probably either has a SCART or component cables.

Either way, it's likely to be much cheaper to get the leads you need.

fwor

It depends on what interfaces you have on the Mac and your TV - I don't know anything about Macs, but if it's like a typical laptop with a VGA or DVI monitor out, and you TV is a recent one with either of those as an input then the cable shouldn't cost much (less than £3 on Ebay).

I think some of the more recent Macs have a mini-DVI connector, and an adapter from that to standard VGA costs around £7, so the leads should not break the bank.

You'll probably need to do something additional with the sound, as IIRC VGA and DVI don't carry that, so maybe some external speakers would be needed to avoid having to listen on the Mac's built-in speakers.

torizia

OK cheers I've got a Samsung LE19R86 TV and a year old white Macbook, the connections look the same as the ones on http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.html . I assume it has one of those mini-DVI connectors as they're all tiny!

I've randomly found a lead which connects my headphone socket to the back of the TV (it splits into two connectors for the TV) and that seems to play the sound through the speakers, but if that doesn't work I have a bose stereo thingy that connects up to my laptop...so I think it's just the video part that I need!

Does that mean I need mini-DVI to HDMI cable?

Thanks again!

fwor

Yes - either a mini-DVI male to HDMI female adaptor plus standard HDMI cable, or a mini-DVI male to HDMI male cable should do it.

The latter is around £9 on Ebay if 1.5m is long enough.

magyar

This sounds like the best solution. I have a friend who has one of the 'media hard drives' you're talking about and it's good, but doesn't play nearly as many file types as the Mac.

Mac via TV can play DVDs, video files, music, iPlayer, etc. etc.