There are multiple ways of connecting your Laptop or PC to a TV. You may want to do this for reasons such as watching YouTube on your TV or perhaps using the DVD or Blu-Ray player on your Computer or Laptop to display the film on a television set.

The first thing to realise is that as a rule, it's gonna give a much better result if you have a newer flat screen TV rather than the old bulky CRT type. The old CRTs for the most part will only have what is called an S-Video input for the picture and the results are not great in fairness to it. We'll leave this out of the overview as it is becoming obsolete technology.

PC or Laptop Computer to TV Using VGA

This is the most common way of hooking up your PC or Laptop to your TV. The reason being is that pretty much every single computer or laptop in the world has a VGA out connection. Not every TV will have this though. If it does, it is easy to hook up, just running the VGA to VGA Cable from the laptop or computer to the back of the television. The problem with this solution is that while it does work well, it only outputs the picture from the laptop and not the sound. This is OK if you just want to surf the net or perhaps watch a presentation or the like but if you want the sound as well, then you will need something like a 3.5mm Audio Jack to RCA (composite) Cable. This allows you to hook up the 3.5mm jack to the speaker / headphones port on the laptop or PC and run them to your TV using the traditionally white/red RCA connections on the TV. There may be a case where you may be able to run a 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio jack (on both ends) from the computer or laptop to the TV but this is less common.

PC or Laptop Computer to TV Using HDMI

This is perhaps the best and easiest solution to the how to connect up your laptop or PC to a TV question. If your PC or Laptop has a HDMI out port on it (not every machine will unfortunately), then by just connecting up a standard Latop to TV HDMI Cable to both the HDMI output on the Computer or laptop and running the other end of the cable to a free HDMI input on the back of the TV, you can transfer both the audio and picture to the TV from your laptop or PC (as long as the card in the machine supports both) It will probably be the case that with laptops, it will more than likely be supported but may not always be the case with a PC and you should check the specs of your graphics card in the computer and no assume that it will do this.

PC or Laptop Computer to TV Using DVI

This could potentially be a long tutorial if I went into the ins and outs of DVI. There are a range of DVI connections but in reality they only two that the vast majority of people need to concern themselves with is, DVI-D and DVI-I. DVI will not be present on your laptop, it is really a PC graphics card connection. In fact, as regards DVI-D and DVI-I, it will be more than likely that your graphics card has a DVI-I connection. DVI-I is a universal DVI compatible connection that works with both analogue and digital signals. The reason we sell the DVI-D connection is that is it for the vast majority of people, less expensive and more than sufficient. The issue with DVI as with VGA is that it only transfers the picture, so an additional cable will be needed if you want to transfer the sound also. For connection your PC to a TV using DVI connectors, you will have a few options. A straight DVI to DVI cable would be easiest but there aren't a lot of TVs that have a DVI input. It would be far more common for you to use the DVI connection on the computer and convert it to HDMI using an adapter. You can just hook up a HDMI cable to the DVI to HDMI adapter and run the other end of the HDMI cable to a free HDMI input on the back of the TV. You can get cables that do this all in one but a lot of folks have old HDMI cables lying around the home, so a cheaper option in that case is to just get the adapter.