August 4, 2010

Video Cables to connect Laptop or Netbook to an external monitor or TV

In this article, I'll talk about the different video cable types you can use to connect your laptop or netbook to your external monitor or TV like tube tv, or HDTV set.

Connecting your Laptop or Netbook to a LCD or CRT tube monitor

In most cases most modern laptops and netbooks has a VGA port for allowing you to use a VGA cable from your laptop to your external monitor like LCD or CRT tube monitor with a VGA Cable. However, the cable is built-in to the monitor for some monitors I used, so you do not have to buy a separate cable.
Note: CRT tube monitors only uses VGA cables since CRT monitors use an Analog cable.

If you want to connect your higher-end laptop or netbook to a LCD monitor. You can also use a DVI-I cable but from my experience there are fewer laptops which has DVI-I out compared to VGA out. DVI-I is digital so the video quality is better.

Connecting your Laptop or Netbook to a TV

Many newer laptops has an HDMI output which can be used to connect to your HDTV or newer LCD monitor. The good thing about a HDMI Cable is it can also carry digital sound and video, so you don't need a seperate audio cable to attach to your speakers, and video ports for your TV or LCD monitor. Plus, HDMI cables are inexpensive if you buy them from Amazon, Ebay, and other online retailers.

S-Video output is also common in many laptops and some netbooks.  The quality is not HD, but you can connect your S-video cable to most mid-end tube TVs or HDTVs with S-video.  I find S-video the most difficult video cable to connect since you have to align the pins perfectly and the cable is round, so it is very easy to insert it the wrong way like those PS/2 mice which came before USB.  The quality is better then RCA, but not as great as VGA DVI-I, or HDMI which can carry an HD video signal.

I seen some laptops have a RCA Yellow video connector.The video quality is a little bit lower quality then S-video. The main difference is S-video has better color quality then S-video. But,  RCA cables are easier to connect to a TV, or HDTV since it only uses one pin to connect to the video port. However, RCA video signal are standard definition like S-video cables, so they look worse then VGA, DVI-I, or HDMI cables connected to a monitor or HDTV TV set.

I hope you found my guide on the different video cable types for connecting your laptop, or netbook to your external monitor, TV helpful.

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