Many people have purchased large screen flat panel televisions over the last few years and one of the cool by-products of having an HDTV is many will have a plethora of inputs that will allow you to view your desktop computer quickly and easily right on your television. Some of the geeky pleasures of having the ability to output your computer to a TV are showing off videos or photos on the big screen, and using it as a very large work or gaming screen. In this Tech Tip, we are going to look at some quick and easy methods for viewing your computer's output on your television (these tips work great for projectors as well).

What you will need:

The quick, cheap and basic way to get a computer to show up on a TV is to plug it in. If you have a desktop pc, you may be able to use the cable that you have right now going to your monitor. If you have a notebook computer, you’ll need to buy an additional cable(s).
Here’s the common inputs you’ll see:

VGA Cable
This is the tried and true connector that we have seen on computers, well almost forever. This is the connector that nearly every HDTV will have. Sure you may not get the resolution you need, and it can’t play back protected content (think Blu-Ray movies), but it is quick and simple to use.

S-Video
Some computers have it, some don’t – but S-Video is also a quick and easy way to get the computer screen working on the TV. The nice thing about S-Video is that it will many times work on standard resolution TVs if you still have one hanging around (the resolution is not that good, but it's a nice way to show off pictures).

DVI Cable
DVI is a terrific format to use, not only because it can support very high resolutions, but also because it can support full resolution HDCP protected content (High Definition movies such as found with Blu-Ray). Because the signal is digital (VGA isn’t), you also tend to get a much better looking picture than you would than with VGA. The cable can cost more, and it doesn’t carry audio (you’d need a separate audio patch cable for that), however the next cable on our list does.

HDMI Cable
For hooking a computer to an HDTV, this is definitely the way to go for many people because it's one cable that carries both video and audio, it supports HDCP protected content and high resolutions, and is relatively inexpensive. One drawback is that while many laptops have an HDMI connector, many desktops do not – so you’d need to add that port yourself (usually through a video card upgrade).