Acer Aspire 4730

[tjansen]

I have an Acer Aspire 4730Z with a VGA port as well as the green, orange (for headset) and blue colored ports. I have a non-HD tv set with RCA ports, yellow and white, marked audio and video in and out, and a coax port. How can I connect my Acer to the TV to use it as a monitor? If you use any other acronyms, please define them. I am not very tech savvy.

Thank you.

[lopburi3]

Am not sure if they even have a conversion for that as you would have to use your VGA out on computer and the audio/video in on TV. As you seem to not even have stereo audio inputs on the TV not sure a mono solution would even be available.

What most people would likely do is use a DVD with USB input to copy to a thumb drive and play from that. But not sure any DVD player would have mono audio output available so that probably is not a solution for you.

Hopefully others can be of more help but expect a visit to a TV/computer repair shop rather than a computer mall/sales might be your best choice as they would be more likely to have old parts and willing to work on it.

[Crossy]

I have (somewhere) a VGA to composite adaptor box, it worked but I was somewhat disappointed with the picture quality. It was usable for watching video but little else.

For the audio you'll need to convert stereo to mono, usually getting a 2 to one RCA adaptor works OK.

[welo]

1. Video

I have no experience with VGA to Composite converters. I usually use the SVHS-out on the laptop (if it has one), assuming that the SHVS-out on the laptop takes advantage of the closer integration with the video card - no idea if this is actually the case. But be warned, my experience is that those SVHS-out often don't work, and if you google for it, you'll see that this is not just my experience.

I personally would go for one of those 700THB DIVX/MP4/DVD players plus a 8GB USB thumb drive if the SVHS doesn't work.

A SVHS-out looks like this

That said, my experience with Laptop -> TV is a bad one. More often than not I couldn't get it to work, and googling on this topics reveals that it is not a lack of expertise on my side, but a problem of lousy drivers.

You can than use various cable combinations to connect the video signal to the TV.

TV might either have a

RCA connector aka 'Cinch' connector

or a Scart/Euro-Scart/EuroAV

Or maybe even a SVHS-in (very unlikely though)

This is a cable set to connect both video and audio to SCART

This is SVHS to SVHS (usually better shielding than RCA cables, but also more expensive)

Here some SVHS to RCA adapters/cables

For video the shorter or thicker (that is better shielded) a cable is the better. The less plugs, the better. All affects signal quality. If using Cinch/RCA cables you will find many long cables (5m up) with poor shielding - this is because these cables can also be used for transmitting audio signals. The color code usually is yellow - video audio (left/right) - yellow/white (or vice versa) You can use audio cables to transmit a video signal, no problem for testing your setup or with short cables (1m), but usually the video signal quality will deteriorate. So connecting laptop and TV physically is just a question of right cables, adapters.

However, my experience is that many times it will not work due to bad video card drivers. Usually there is an option when you go to Display Settings -> Advanced. It is often related to Dual Monitor support. You should be able to choose 'TV' as a second monitor, then decide whether the picture should be mirrored, etc. More often than not the 'TV' is not detected and greyed out (or doesn't show up). Other times you can try to force the driver to enable the port but it still doesn't work.

I've read that the problem is that the video port is laptop/vendor specific and the standard video card drivers (Intel, ATI, NVIDIA) will therefore often not work. So your best bet is to install the drivers specific to your laptop from the vendor's support site (Compaq, Acer, etc).

2. Audio

Instead of getting a 2to1 RCA adapter for the audio you could set your playback software to MONO. The software will mix left and right channel and output the mix on both channels. You then need to connect only one of the channels to your TV. I guess this will get better results than the 2to1 adapter.

Edited June 8, 2010 by welo

[David006]

I have a 4720 which has a db connector (external monitor )and use a similar connector into my plasma TV, in your case you will need a hybrid cable they must exist as I have used them for attachment to presentation projectors in the past (with dell laptop) which were composite coax and/or video/audio coax input. if you cannot get audio another option would buy some PC speakers..they are good quality nowadays ..I use 'em for my music from laptop and it is quite satisfactory even though I have a Denon sound system...too lazy to hook it up I guess...

Having said all that I found it not worth the effort to feed video to tv ...so never bother now..just use the laptop monitor lol

[welo]

Some info on the VGA to Composite adapter that Crossy mentioned.

This is not just a cable but a small box, because the VGA signal needs to be converted!

You will find (and maybe be offered) simple VGA to RCA cables at a (much?) lower price that will NOT WORK!

The problem is that with a cable like this you'll get the connectors to match, however, the VGA signal from a computer (RGBVH) is very different from the composite video signal that your analog TV expects. This cable will only provide a physical connection, but not convert the signal. Hence it will NOT work.

So why do these cables even exist?

There are scenarios where these cables work. Either if the TV actually does support the VGA signal for input (very rare in analog consumer TVs, I doubt yours is one of it), or if the laptop is able to output a composite video signal on the VGA output (read here). I doubt the latter is very common or standard, but I might be wrong.

Furthermore, I think projectors usually do support this since they 'understand' VGA signals in general (and mostly have VGA input anyway).

source (and images): How To Connect a Computer To Your TV (Page 4 of 4): TechLore

Audio should not be a problem at all, just get 3.5mm stereo TRS to Cinch cable.

@David006

What's a db connector?

[tjansen]

Thanks so much to one and all, especially for going to the trouble to include very helpful pictures. I visited a local computer repair shop, and he said I need to buy a 'box' (my term) for about 900 baht. That must be the converter that you mention and show. I was hoping to just do it with cables. You have all helped me avoid a lot of frustration and wasted time. It sounds like I just need to decide if I want to spend the 900 to get a somewhat satisfactory picture. Thanks again for confirming TV as my information source of choice.

Tom

[welo]

If possible bring your laptop and test the box at the shop and see if you are OK with the picture quality.

Just as crossy said, you might be a bit disappointed even though it should be OK for movies - just remember that a TV has a screen resolution of about 768x576, and TVs usually cut away from the border. And there are other issues related to analog signal conversion. Expect smaller text on your windows desktop to be very blury and hardly readable. Make sure you set the screen resolution on your laptop to the lowest possible (usually 640x480 or 800x600).

For 900 THB you still have the option of buying a cheapo DVD player with DIVX/MPG4 support from BIGC/Tesco/etc, and watch movies from a USB thumb drive. Image quality will be better than with the converter box!

Pros: better image quality, remote control, do the cabling only once not every time you want to watch.

Cons: Cannot play all (downloaded) movies (but most), PC more versatile in terms of supported software (e.g. use as music jukebox)

Have fun!