How Do I Connect My Laptop To My TV?

These days a lot of people find themselves asking "How do I connect my laptop to my TV?" This is a result of all the rich media available online, as well as HDTVs being able to replicate the high resolutions of a computer screen for gaming and other purposes. A lot of people are incorporating a computer into their home theater, and the specifics of how to go about doing this can be a bit tricky with the many different connections and signal types out there.

The best possible connections you can make are those that are high resolution digital signals carrying both audio and video. The connections that can accomplish this are HDMI, DisplayPort, and Mini DisplayPort, therfore these are the best answer to the question of how to connect laptop to tv. HDMI is ideal, because many TVs have HDMI inputs. Few TVs have either of the DisplayPort type connections on them though, so if you have only these outputs on your computer, you're going to have to use some sort of adapter. This will either come in the form of a cable with one of the DisplayPort connections on one end, and an HDMI connection on the other, or a separate little adapter that will plug into your DisplayPort, and have an female HDMI connection. The cable is the easiest way to go, so I've set up a selection here to the right that you can get on Amazon. Keep in mind that cheap HDMI cables, like the one I have here, are just as good as expensive ones for use in a home theater. It's only over long distances that quality of the cable can become a problem.

If you don't have one of the above connections, then your next best bet is going to be a version of DVI, whether it is standard, mini or micro. These are all going to be high resolution digital video signals, though none of them carry audio.

Getting sound from your pc to your TV for these connections if going to require you to use the headphone jack and an adapter that will allow it to plug into the red & white RCA audio inputs. This will only be stereo sound, and will not carry the surround sound that the digital a/v connections mentioned above (HDMI & DisplayPort) have the ability to carry.

These are not your best options when it comes to connecting your laptop to your TV because they are analog signals, and without getting into the gory details, digital signals are always better. VGA does carry high resolutions though, and S-video can carry low-end HD resolutions, so they really aren't that bad. RCA is has the lowest resolution of them all. These will all also require the headphone jack to RCA method of getting the sound from the laptop to the TV because none of them carry audio. I suspect less and less people are going to have to deal with these last connections because most of them are being phased out in lieu of the more high tech solutions, like HDMI.

However, if you need to these these up, while some TVs have VGA connections, most don't. Most of the time you will have to use either a VGA to component, S-video, or RCA adapter cable. That is the order from best to worst resolutions. Computers don't ever really have a component output, but a VGA to component is going to be the best solution for computers that don't have a digital video output. The cables to make these connections can be found on Amazon, and I've posted them here to the right.

You can see that while the information involved with hooking your laptop to your TV can seem a bit intimidating at first, it's pretty easy once you break it down. If you still have questions about how to hook your laptop to your TV, just ask away in the comments below.