Connecting Your Media Center PC to Your HDTV
By Tim Coyle |
December 6th, 2005
Comments (3)
So you’ve decided to jump into the 21st century and setup your digital living room using a PC running some media center application like Microsoft’s Media Center. But when you go to hook up your PC to your new plasma HDTV the cables don’t match and you’re confused – what’s going on here? Well, using a PC in the digital living room has a few hang-ups so here’s my do’s and don’ts for hooking up your PC to your HDTV.
Do make sure your HDTV (or projector or whatever) has a HDMI connection. The HDMI interface is all digital meaning you won’t lose any picture quality going from your PC to your HDTV. Most HDTV’s have multiple video input connections available like S-Video as well as HDMI so even if you aren’t using it now still get it because eventually everything will be using HDMI.
Do plan on getting some conversion cables for connecting your PC to your HDTV. Most video cards now have a DVI output which is great for connecting to your HDTV. DVI is an all digital interface (which is good because there is no picture quality loss) and HDMI is actually based upon DVI except better because it can also carry audio. The problem is that most HDTV’s don’t have a DVI port – only a HDMI port. Since HDMI is backwards compatible with DVI then you can buy a converter cable. But people have had lots of issues connecting DVI to HDMI due to a number of issues ranging from some TV manufacturer’s not fully supporting DVI backwards compatibility and the copy protection built into HDMI.
Don’t think you are going to keep the same video card forever. As we just talked about, your current video card only had a DVI output at best – there are not any video cards that have an HDMI output yet. But HDMI video cards from both ATI and Nvidia are coming and will probably be the best type of video card to buy or upgrade to. The most recent HDMI specification released (1.2) included some new improvements for connecting your PC HDMI port to your HDTV HDMI port as well. Again, the real issue is that the DVI output from your video card may not be compatible with the HDMI input on your HDTV, especially with the HDCP copy protection scheme.
Do plan on downloading the PowerStrip program to deal with overscan and learning how to use it here. Overscan is a known issue with connecting a PC to a TV and what it does is basically cut off part of the image on your TV (It really has nothing to do with using a PC and is an artifact of how video images are displayed on TV’s and monitors to keep a solid image on your screen). So this is an issue when you are trying to see your Start menu or other text on the edges of your screen. Some video cards now have built-in overscan controls like Nvidia.
Don’t forget to calibrate your TV. Check out this CNET article on the cheap and expensive ways to calibrate your new HDTV. Chances are you will get a much better picture by not using the out-of-box settings.
Great entry and links; nice and simple and all here… Thanks.
I was really hoping they’d make mention of DVI to HDMI since many new HDTV sets do not have DVI connections anymore (in favor of HDMI). I’ve heard that sometimes using DVI to HDMI cables can cause problems? Anybody have any info on this?
Am now putting together a media box & HDTV.
Sure can use this post !
Trying to connect an MCE PC to a Mitsubishi WS-65712 – which seems to have every possible connection except DVI or HDMI. I’m wondering if it’s possible to use converters to and hook up the DVI output from the PC to either the component video or maybe even the Firewire inputs on the tv and still get a decent picture.