Connecting Your Laptop To Your TV

There are several reasons to connect a laptop to a TV. Watching TV online or using your laptop as a DVD player is much better on a 60 inch big screen TV than it is on the tiny dim laptop screen. It can also be helpful for presentations or slide shows, allowing more people to see the material on the screen.

There are several different types of connections available due to the variety of types of computers and TVs. These connections differ in quality and you will probably have to choose based on which type of port your TV and computer have in common. You will also most likely need one of the modern digital TV’s. If the TV is too old, it is very unlikely that it will have any of the proper ports or settings necessary to connect to the laptop.

An HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) Cable is the highest quality way to connect your TV and laptop. This will only be available with newer HDTV’s and very new computers. Just because your TV has one does not mean your computer will. However, it is easy to find adapters with one side HDMI and the other DVI, a much more common computer port.

DVI (Digital Video Interface) Cables are also a very common way to link computers to external monitors as well as sync up multiple TVs. This means that it is very likely that both your computer and TV will have this port. VGA ports are also common as they are an older version of DVI. If you have an older TV or computer you might need one of these instead.