Apple tv vs cable to connect mac to tv

NJG_2

Hi,

I want to connect my macbook to my tv and wonder what product I should get. The apple store have told me I need a mini dvi to vgc cable (which will need a vgc to vgc extension cable) or I could use Apple TV.

I want to be able to stream from my laptop from a browser or play on the tv from stuff I've imported into iTunes.

Is Apple tv capable of streaming or just playing from iTunes? Is it worth the £70+ or are there cheaper alternatives? Or should I just stomach the endless cables and use the mini dvi to vgc cable?

wba31

If you only want to extend the desktop and use your TV as a bigger monitor, go with the cable

The Apple TV is great for airplaying media from the macbook to the TV, it also takes the sound too, whereas the cable wont, so if you have good speakers for your TV, Apple TV is better.

I use Apple TV a lot, I rent movies through it (using my itunes account) play the music off my iMac through it (when not sat by my imac and by my TV), If watching things on youtube i either load them on my phone/ipad and airplay them, or use the youtube app on the Apple TV itself, if you have netflix it has a netflix app to get films. It's a great device that extends your home network to your TV, great if you have a mac, iphone/ipad/ipod touch!

charmedcharlee21

I've always connected my Macbook using a mini DVI to Hdmi cable and has worked fine

InsideInsurance

What TV do you have?
Which MacBook?

On the basis they are recommending miniDVI to VGA it suggest both TV and laptop are very old. If they are then you couldnt use AppleTV with the TV anyway due to its lack of a HDMI port. If the TV does have a HDMI port then the advice from Apple was wrong.


More recent computers can mirror their screens onto a TV via AppleTV, older computers cannot officially and only stream via iTunes/ iPhoto. If your laptop has miniDVI rather than DisplayPort then its certainly too old to officially mirror screens. There are third party applications that do allow you to do additional streaming but you'd need to check their capabilities and compatibility.

almillar

As II says, if this is indeed a MacBook, and not a MacBook Pro, then it doesn't have the graphics ability to do the streaming to the AppleTV, not officially and not reliably. You're stuck with cables. If your Macbook does indeed have MiniDVI, you want to go from that, to HDMI ideally. This won't include sound so you would want a mini jack (headphone socket) output too. I guess there might be a MiniDVI + mini jack to HDMI adaptor...

InsideInsurance

almillar wrote: »

I guess there might be a MiniDVI + mini jack to HDMI adaptor...

You would actually need a box of tricks to combine the signals into one as audio from the Macbook would be analogue stereo via copper or digital via optical where as HDMI is digital via copper.

I assume the later macbooks had a mini displayport instead of the miniDVI in which case the later models of those can do sound directly from it and you can get a simple mini displayport to HDMI cable for sound and vision