I can bet that many times you have look at you gigantic television set and thought why you could not hook up your computer to it and play all your PC games or watch movies on that new large screen. Well, guess what? You can use your television as a monitor for your computer .It can be done but there are some conditions to it. Generally TV-sets today have three basic types of input. It has the coaxial cable input which is the same as the cable box or satellite, the RCA composite input, which are the yellow, white and red inputs and last but not least the S-video connector. Some new generations of televisions will have video, VGA, DVI or HDMI components and inputs but the ones that were named earlier are the most common.

You must identify your computers output because today computer companies are adding outputs compatible with TV sets so it would be much easier to get them connected. You shall find the usual VGA output that a regular monitor will get connected to. Most probably the computers of the future will have a high definition output that will connect you TV directly and for now we try to manage with what outputs or inputs people have on their devices because it is still possible to play Heroes III on you TV.



You must find the appropriate connections adapter so you can connect you computer to the TV. They have a VGA adapter on one end and on the other a selection with many other components like S-video, RCA etc. The advantage is that you will be able to connect to many TV sets. The most recommended device would be a wireless adapter that cost a bit more that would be worth it because you would not have a cable mess and would not keep you TV near you computer.

If your TV is compatible with the output on your computer, like a S-video jack just take the S-video cable and connect it to the computer and the TV. If you do not have it, then attach your VGA end of your adaptor to the computer and use the Components for video RCA to the TV and be sure that after you have made the connections that were required you have to make sure that you are on the video TV input. You should press the input button and you shall see the computer's signal.The usual TV video signal is called NTSC or Pal if you are among the ones that live in Europe and the signal is very different from the one that generates your computer, computer signals being measured by pixels 320x200, 320x240, 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768, 1280x1024 or 1600x1200.



General TV sets can have 500 lines with resolution and in computer language that would be 500 vertical pixels and the video amplifier from the television set will not manage higher resolutions so you will have to use a resolution of 640 x 480. You can still play your video games and watch movies with a lower resolution but you will never manage to get close to the resolution that the computer monitor will offer you.

Some adapters state that they can give you a better resolution than 640 x 480 but they would only reduce the original signal of the television to compensate.

Another way would be to buy an adapter for HDTV which will provide you with higher resolutions but you would need an HDTV and the price would be 3 or 4 times more than the standard adapter. It is not hard to use you television set as a computer monitor, any way you would choose, if you just follow some ground rules that were stated up above.