If you have a number of movies saved on your computer's hard drive and want to watch them on your big-screen TV with surround sound, you can hook up your computer to your home-theater system. Thanks to the variety of input ports and input menus on most HD TV sets, including the computer as part of your theater system is much easier. If you want to make the computer your monitor for your cable TV and other home-theater devices, this is also possible, although a little extra hardware and software are needed.
Instructions
Computer to TV
1. Check to see if your TV set has a VGA input port. Most LCD HD TVs will have one. Connect the computer to the TV set with a VGA cable. HDMI and S-Video cable connections are other possible options.
2. Connect the computer's audio output to your home-theater sound system. Make sure your computer's sound card is capable of surround sound, for the best results. Use an HDMI connection if possible. Otherwise, you need a mini-to-RCA cable with the red-and-white composite plugs on one end and a mini stereo plug on the other.
3. Turn on the computer, TV and sound system. Go to the TV's Input menu and select the input port you connected the computer to. Your computer screen will appear on the TV. Play any movies or videos on your hard drive.
TV to Computer
4. Install a video capture card onto your computer that will allow it to receive the TV signal. Make sure it has input ports that your main video unit will connect to. It should have RCA composite ports if nothing else, but component or S-Video ports will work better.
5. Connect your home theater to the video card. If your video units are all connected through a central console, connect its output to the TV. Otherwise, take the last device directly connected to your TV set--be it the cable box, DVR or DVD player--and switch its output connection to the computer.
6. Open up your computer's video player application, like Media Player or QuickTime, and see if it recognizes your video card. Make sure you installed any software needed to recognize the card's driver. If it still doesn't work, download and install a video-editing program like Media Encoder or TV Tuner.
7. Connect your theater's audio output to the computer. Use an RCA-to-mini stereo cable and make sure you connect it to the computer's audio input. If the theater system is in the same room as the computer, you can just leave it connected to your surround system.
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