How Can I Play Movies Stored On My Lapton On My Tv?

[slippery when wet]

Hello all.

I have a lot of movies stored on my laptop but wish to watch them on my tv (my rewriter is up the creek so cant copy to disc).

Can anyone advise hot this can be done. On the back of my tv I have the normal scart but also have 2 small, I think that they are audio connections.Any help would be appreciated...Thanks.......slippery

[zthyadat]

I've tried the thing with the cable plugging directly into the TV and it is a pain to set up and often yields crappy quality. But... you can purchase pretty much any new DVD player with a USB port (I just picked on up for 750 baht), transfer AVI files (the most common type downloaded from the net) to a thumb drive, insert it in your player, and it will play most of them. A menu comes up on the screen and you choose your video and it plays at decent quality (depending on the quality of the source. The standard "ripped" 700 megabyte files are perfectly adequate. Many models will also let you directly plug in an external hard drive as well so you can have the whole collection on tap. Note: Make sure that the player specifies on the sticker or box that it will play AVI or MPEG4 files.

Enjoy!

[theseahorse]

I used to do the same as zthyadat said but got fed up with copying a film onto a thumb drive each time I wanted to watch it, nearly all DVD players with a USB port only except a limited amount of files (mine was only 99) so I bought myself a media player box. I bought a WD HD Live although there are plenty of others around. The 'Live' version also gives you Youtube, internet radio, flickr etc on your telly and connects to your modem/ network, but the standard WD HD player would do what you want. I hardly ever use the extras the 'Live' version gives me.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=30

Mine cost me under 5000 baht (but from Singapore, it might be closer to six here) but I think the standard WD HD player (without Youtube etc) is only about 3000 here, although you do need to buy a hard drive as well to store your files on.

This is probably the best gadget I've ever bought. I now have all my films, music and photos avaliable at the touch of the remote control and shown in full HD 1080p on my telly.

Do a search on Thai Visa, there has been a lot of chat about media boxes in the past

Edited May 29, 2010 by theseahorse

[lopburi3]

You can never gain quality - those 700meg files will not be any better on a DVD at 4.7 gigs than they are played from a computer or thumb drive. VOB is yesterdays system and almost all DVD players today do not need it - they can play normal AVI, XVID and such files directly.

[KunMatt]

Several ways to do it;

Directly link Laptop to TV - this depends on the outputs of you laptop and what your TV will accept. Best way is HDMI out from laptop to HDMI in on a TV, definitely sounds like your TV is not capable of this though. A lot of laptops have S-video out and perhaps your TV has a S-Video connector on the front panel. If not you could always buy a convertor to go from HDMI/S-Video/VGA to SCART but I wouldn't.

Stream to your TV - I brought my sister a Western Digital TV box for Xmas and gave her a 320GB hard drive full of TV shows, the little WDTV box is very user friendly and works very well, you just connect your hard drive or a thumb drive to the box and everything you can watch is listed on screen. I believe the "WDTV Live" box the other poster mentioned has streaming from a laptop via WiFi. You could also stream directy from your laptop to your TV via a PS3 if you have one, this is how I do it.

You could also buy a media center or if you have a DVD player that plays DivX avi files etc, then buy an external portable drive to copy your all movies onto and play them through your DVD player, note the drive must be formatted in FAT32 otherwise the DVD player probably won't recognise it. Just look for the "DivX" symbol on the front of your DVD player.

[astral]

I've tried the thing with the cable plugging directly into the TV and it is a pain to set up and often yields crappy quality.

Then they are low quality video, or perhaps a cheap cable?

I regularly connect my laptop to projectors and screen for work.

Never had a problem with quality.

The WD box is the way to go for watching films, with a suitable usb disk.

I use Seagate 500Gb.

[rijb]

You could put them on a DVD... http://lifehacker.com/232322/hack-attack-b...-a-playable-dvd

[phazey]

I found a small laptop hdd enclosure in pantip a year or two ago. Did'nt pay more than 700 baht for it - it had the bonus of having VGA/A/V out on it, so once you load it with movies, you can directly plug it into your TV/Monitor. Has some small controls + remote too. Quite a nice bargain.

[T_Dog]

Amorn Electronics sells 10 meter long display cables. Buy one and connect it to the external display port of your laptop and the other end to your TV and you are in business. (This assumes your TV has a display input.) They also sell audio cables (earphone plug on one end and right/left RCA plugs on the other end) so you can hook it up to your stereo system. Works great.