TV inputs

Snugster

Am looking to buy a cheap telly - what input sockets do I need on it to play iplayer from a laptop and avi files from a portable hard drive.
TIA

googler

Won't it depend on what sockets you have on the laptop?

FWIW, you can get a box from Maplin that will take VGA out from any laptop or desktop and feed it to a SCART, S-VHS or RCA video input on a TV.

Don't know about connecting a hard drive directly, though. Wouldn't you connect that to the laptop and used the laptop to play it back?

flashg67

Depends on your laptop - if it's fairly modern and has an HDMI socket, you just need a TV with an hdmi socket as well, buy a cheap HDMI lead and away you go! Otherwise you'll need a TV that has a VGA input to connect from the VGA socket on your laptop and a PC 'sound in' socket on the TV and connect a male to male 3.5mm headphone type lead also, because VGA will only send the picture, not sound.

AFAIK, you'll struggle play video direct from a hard drive, and will propably need something like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167205

Snugster

googler wrote: »

Won't it depend on what sockets you have on the laptop?

FWIW, you can get a box from Maplin that will take VGA out from any laptop or desktop and feed it to a SCART, S-VHS or RCA video input on a TV.

Don't know about connecting a hard drive directly, though. Wouldn't you connect that to the laptop and used the laptop to play it back?

Doh, I hadn't thought of that.:embarasse
So in summary if the laptop has HD socket and the new telly will (I'm buying an HD one) it'll be easy just to connect with a lead otherwise, it's a bit of a faff.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Many modern TV's accept USB dongles. A USB dongle can of course be a 3.5 inch one terrabyte hard drive. A selection of MP3's / movies etc on that HDD can then be played direct from the TV's own media player without even the need for a Lappie.