How to Hook a Laptop to a TV - What Do You Need?
Today, many laptops are designed more for media related purposes such as watching movies with blu-ray players, DVDs, and even the media from the hard drive. This gives many people a very good reason to use their laptop as a home theater entertainment source. It is also very useful for business related purposes.
Pretty much every laptop comes with an HDMI connection which is great for hooking the laptop to the TV. As long as both the TV and the laptop have an HDMI connection, any length of HDMI cable will work great for you. On some newer laptops, the video and audio can be transmitted from the lap top to TV from a single cable. However, if you are having trouble getting audio to play out of the TV, then you should get a stereo (headphone) to 2 RCA (red and white connections) audio adapter cable. This will allow you to play audio out of the laptop along with the beautiful picture an HDMI cable will provide.
If you have an older laptop that only has a VGA output, then you can use a VGA cable for the video, but it will not be able to produce the same high resolutions that an HDMI connection will provide. Some people ask if a VGA to HDMI converter will work, but unfortunately they will not be able to produce the same quality as HDMI.
Some laptops have a DVI output. DVI is capable of the same high resolutions HDMI can do since they are both the same type of digital signal. The only difference is that DVI can only carry video to the TV. So for those with DVI on their laptop, all you will need to hook the laptop to TV is a DVI to HDMI cable and the stereo to RCA adapter cable I mentioned earlier.
