HDTV Forum

I got HP 42" plasma widescreen TV with all kind of connection except DVI. I tried to connect my Dell Inspiron E1505 Laptop with VGA output to my HP but what happened was that my desktop were all messed up and everything on my HP TV were wide and distorted. Then I biult PC with ATI 256 MB video card with DVI and VGA output. When I connected DVI to HDCI on HP TV I tried to run internet but distortion (wide) was unpleasent to see and browse. I came back to VGA to VGA and that worked fine but I have to resized from 42" to 36" my screen and picture was kind of dimmed. So I took apart PC that I built and sold it as a parts. My question is: is there any adapter or software I can download or buy in market that will delivere picture or movie or give me same quality of screen for browsing on Internet like I have on my Laptop?

the model of that HP plasma is....?

Too bad you got rid of the computer. I have an ATI ALL IN WONDER 9600 display card It has a tv tuner and the display menu offers several different shapes for hooking to a TV. It would be worth a try for you. Just thought I would mention about the ATI card. They aren't cheap though, but cost is relative.

HP PL4260N is the model.

That one is 1024X768 and that is a 4:3 ratio for square pixels which means your pixels have to be rectangular to make it 16:9 and it is 16:9...

You are pretty much stuck. If you tell your video card to output 1024X768 it will be stretched as you have noted but that is the only way you will get the crystal clarity of 1:1 pixel mapping. The only way to correct the geometry is to output 1280X720 but then you lose clarity.

Choose your poison or replace the display...

My bad luck. Thanks.

By the way can you advice me: What is the best combination? Laptop : 42" plasma
Desktop (quite) : 42 " plasma or LCD or what will be best to have to got true color or how ever they call picture on display 42" size or larger.
Thanks

I'll get l1ake to answer the laptop versus desktop since he just did a bunch of research on this for gaming applications...

As for the display it has have a pixel depth native to video standards or PC standards. If you want it to also do great at HDTV then there are only two choices... 1280X720 or 1920X1080, those are the TWO numbers you are looking for; a statement of 720p or 1080p is inconclusive.

You can always get a PC to conform to an HDTV pixel depth display but you can't get HD to conform to a PC pixel depth display. As an example, a 1080p PC display is actually 1920X1200 and those extra 120 pixels typically spell disaster for HDTV sources.

You have to be careful how you set your output. If you clone the output (have it display on both your laptop and pc), you'll probably run into trouble. If I was going to hook my laptop to a tv, I would make sure that the TV is the primary source and that the laptop display is the secondary. This makes it so you have complete control of the TV display (since that is what you are using it for anyway). Cloning, in general, isnt that great. You always lose control of the secondary output, so if that is your TV, it'll do the things you described (distort, stretch, etc). Unfortunately, it does seem that if you clone, the primary output has to be the display on the laptop. There are no other options. So if you are serious about watching it on your tv, you really should set your display mode to single display rather than clone. This does mean you will lose the display on the laptop. The only HD movies Ive ever watched on the PC were 720. I would assume that with a 1080 movie, you need to be careful about using full screen viewing. It will probably stretch the movie by 120 pixels rather than keeping it centered and pixel mapped. Windows Media Player will stretch a 720 video to 1440 (i run 1440x900 on my laptop) if I select full screen. I bet though that there is an option to prevent that while removing the nav/option bars (which is the point of full screen). In terms of what is better for viewing: the main thing you have to be careful with in a laptop is the hardware. A good example is that I have a slate tablet pc with some relatively poor hardware: 1.2ghz processor, integrated intel gpu. That thing will choke up on movies that are 1024x768, so I can only assume it would choke/slow down even more with HD movies. Desktops are generally better than laptops in terms of speed. You could probably go to walmart and get a video card capable of running HD movies. Im not sure if you want to play video games or not, but if you want it just for movies, here are some things to keep in mind: mobility. A laptop is extremely mobile compared to a desktop (depending on how you build the desktop of course - there are some micro atx cases that are designed for mobility - essentially a box with a handle). If you plan on having a mobile home theater pc, a laptop would seem ideal. However, for what you get, laptops are expensive compared to desktops. If you are going for HD movies only, a desktop would be cheap compared to a laptop. So if you aren't going to be wanting a mobile system, a desktop would probably be your best bet. There are cases out there that are designed for the home theater look. Essentially, the cases look like a DVD player. There is a ton of info here of course, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. In terms of picture quality: plasma vs. lcd, I really cant help you there. Im sure Richard can.

to follow up: the desktop cases with that home theater look are called Media Center cases. Here are some examples:

[img]http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-133-029-01.jpg[/img]

[img]http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-280-002-03.jpg[/img]