hooking laptop to tv

how many of you have computer hooked up to tv???. I got a cheap vizio smart tv.. I take it there is 2 ways ... one with some kind of cord and another with some wireless thingy... any reccomendations ??? and whats the name of the cord as I don't wanna depend on walmart employees for any help and there aint another store close. my laptop has signal booster, my tv don't so I need it for netflix movies and such.altho my tv is only slightly bigger than my17.5...lol.peace

what inputs does your TV have?

if it has an hdmi and your laptop does get one of them..

if not you will be stuck with either a s-video cable or vga..

i'd advise use cables wherever possible these days because wireless thingies aren't good for your health,, they micro pulse high frequency fast ocillation microwaves around you which isn't a healthy environment..

thanks ... my tv and laptop both have all inputs... usb ,hdmi,rgb,ethernet and a few I don't have a clue.... so hdmi it is then....

stoned-trout said:

thanks ... my tv and laptop both have all inputs... usb ,hdmi,rgb,ethernet and a few I don't have a clue.... so hdmi it is then....

Click to expand...

i have mine hooked up with Chromecast...its a wireless receiver plugged into the hdmi..it lets the computer send a wireless signal to it...then there is no wires...the app can be used for you phone too..like $40...i love it..ck it out..dj

thanks^^^^^^ I wondered about that thing....prob do both ....hdmi then chromecast

I second the chromecast vote. It's great for most things when set up with plex.

For some things I still need to whip out the old HDMI cable though and have a wire traill across the floor.

I'd like to know how to do this as well. Im pretty sure you might need a certain cord that connects from your computer to the Television?

Apple TV.

Couldn't be easier. Netflix, Hulu, Lifetime (We like Project Runway), Youtube, whatever is on my iPad, it's all right there. We have one in the living room and one in the bedroom, and no cable or satellite or anything else.

There are many HDMI to X connection dongles out there. It really just depends on what outputs you have on your computer

HDMI cable, doesn't get any easier or cheaper than that.

If your tv isnt hdmi compatable,is there some kinda adapter cable you can use?

My TV is 55" Vizio smart POS too (but really is fucking stupid if you ask me) and I got another HDMI cable just to hook the computer to it, besides the surround sound and blue ray player. I just got a 1TeraByte dvr too.

Those dvr's sure are cool. You can pause and replay live TV, or save it for later on too. All 4 HDMI inputs are used on that Vizio POS now though. And no game console is even hooked to it either. POS!

There are some things sent over the computer that are different than sent for just TV broadcast. Pandora for instance. On the computer it has lyrics sometimes and some band bios. I don't get that on just the TV Pandora. That is also why I decided not to Chromecast or another dongle. Limited.

The wierd part is, I don't actually watch much TV, mostly just movies. I just like that techy shit.

The hook-up used to be easy. Just HDMI cord, PC output to TV input. I had actually done it right after I got the computer to see if it worked. It did. Very cool.

It doesn't work anymore. No clue why not. Tried many things, different cords, different laptops, different operating systems, nothing worked. Software updates, terminal commands, whatever I could think of that might work. Nothing. Physically moving around so much, to the TV and back and forth, getting my other laptop, whatever, is hard for me because my balance is so fucked up now I lurch around like a drunken zombie anymore. I knew the HDMI input on the TV worked though, my dvr worked on that input fine. Damn frustrating.

But I never liked that "smart" TV shit though. Once you set up the passwords it, it is always on-line as long as the TV is on. Can't shut it off and on. ON Vizio it's like that anyway. And that just sucks. Actually most of that WiFi capable shit that I have sucks pretty much. They are all huge bandwidth hogs. I have a TV, a printer, a DVD, a camera, that all are wifi capable, and they ALL suck at it. They all won't do something another one will. But all can advertise they are wifi capable to be marketable. But are just huge bandwidth hogs and that bandwidth crap is just getting more and more expensive, not cheaper, and all those units are complicated as hell to use the wifi too.

So I ordered that Chromecast POS for my TV. Sounded so cool. The Ubuntu forum on-line said it would work fine on Linux, so I broke down and ordered one. It DOES NOT work on Ubuntu. Yet anyway. One thing that is annoying about that Ubuntu forum is that since it is open source, every punk-ass computer geek in the world writes in it, mostly just shit too. And then they each say try this, or try this, or this. It's all try it and see if that works. Kinda annoying.

So I spent HOURS trying to make that Chromecast thing work, even shutting the firewall off a couple times because a couple computer nerds said that worked for them. FUCK! I just have to back away from the fucker and regroup. This ain't over, the little bastard. I don't quit. I will not be defeated by a bunch of wires and silicon chips.

I have Windows on another laptop though. I'm sure that security swiss cheese piece of shit would work. Between them and Google, I might as well send just them all my bank account numbers and mutual fund numbers first and then fugit-about-it... Maybe if I sent Google pictures of my dick it might start working.

THAT is the main reason that Google won't let Googlecast on Linux yet though. Because Google doesn't OWN them...yet. Because Linux doesn't think that everybody, except of course just Google themselves and also just the top people at MS or Apple, but everybody else, should just share everything with everybody all the time. Fuck em.

God I'm a such fucking nerd. See what boredom can do kids?

...

I spent a lot of time figuring out why that Chromecast wouldn't work for me. I finally read I had to have the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) enabled on my router. Fucking Google tells people to enable that. But both Homeland Security and the FBI advise against doing that because it opens up your computer to whatever Trojans, malware and viruses are out there because it lets any device at all on your network connect to your computer. So screw it.

I disabled all my wifi enabled devices before because something was stealing my bandwidth, which is pretty expensive here. Fixed that back then. But I now am convinced all that cloud shit and wifi enabled shit is just a stupid pie in the sky idea thought up by people with no grasp of reality and just want to sell shit and make money. No concern for anything but that.

Until they can figure out how to make it all more secure, I just ain't interested. Strangely, I just want my computer to keep working, and working for ME, since I am the one paying for it. That is apparently a wrong idea to have now anymore. DOH! Maybe I'm just getting too old to play this silly shit. It just all seems so strange to me that trickery and deceit seem to be such a big part of that business and people just accept it.

I was bored and screwing around and tried that hdmi cord to an older Sanyo I have, and it worked! I have no clue really why. So I took the cord out and tried it on the big Vizio again. Shazam! Not a clue why really, just did.

I recommend the cord thing though. Anything you get on your PC is sent to the TV. I even got Pandora going over my surround sound now. Rocks. Big screen porn is weird. Titties bigger than your head?

You might have to screw with the screen resolution from the PC to get that to work. Maybe that was why it works now, different resolution.

Yep its hdmi u want. Next best is a vga/pc cable. S video cable tops at 720 I I believe. For computer thats light years behind in resolution..... yeah im a nerd too.. was a home theatre installer for a few years...

Shall I continue for the interested haha... component cables red blue green. Top out at 1080i some devices suppirt 1080p few far between. Yesh never thought id dredge up this knowledfe.

Those red yellow white. Suck balls never use those in this day an age. 480i I think. Svideo is outdated as well.

Chromecast is the bomb!! 40 bucks. Limited but capable device for what it does.

Shell out 100 get a nice android tv box. Put on kodi and netfix and your set. Put your laptop away....

dddaver said:

I was bored and screwing around and tried that hdmi cord to an older Sanyo I have, and it worked! I have no clue really why. So I took the cord out and tried it on the big Vizio again. Shazam! Not a clue why really, just did.

I recommend the cord thing though. Anything you get on your PC is sent to the TV. I even got Pandora going over my surround sound now. Rocks. Big screen porn is weird. Titties bigger than your head?

You might have to screw with the screen resolution from the PC to get that to work. Maybe that was why it works now, different resolution.

Click to expand...

often TVs arent able to display the resolution and changing the resolution output will fix issues with not displaying on HDMI cable

also on the security w the "Unplug and play"
there's a guy named steve gibson who is an egghead security guy w a cool site that has much info on this
grc.com
his FREE port scanner service (SHIELDS UP!) is great when reconfiguring your machine to test yourself for open ports!!