SECOND OPTION:
GET A PC-TO-TV CONVERTER --
JUST PLUG AND PLAY WITHOUT
OPENING UP YOUR PC BY USING
AN EXTERNAL SCAN CONVERTER

This should pretty much go without saying that you simply get the converter and hook up the PC's VGA cable from the PC to the converter and then connect to the TV. And typically no software installation required. For the convenience and the quality, you may find that PC-to-TV scan converters can be a little pricey at the manufacturer's suggested retail price but it depends on how much you may want to spend. If you search around for these converters, you may possibly have a better chance of finding these converters online instead of at a brick-and-mortar store that you can walk into. So, here are links for several reasonably priced converters (except for maybe the AverMedia AverVision) that you can check out online. You may want to pay particular attention to the Grandtec Ultimate Wireless PC to TV Converter which you can use for a wireless setup by placing your PC system in one room while your TV is in another room.

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PLEASE VISIT AGAIN FOR UPDATES

THIRD OPTION:
GET A MATROX VIDEO CARD
WITH DUALHEAD PORTS

This option is to get a Matrox video card with dualhead ports. This first option assumes you either have a TV set of some sort that you want to hook up to or that you are shopping around looking for a sale so you can get a good analog somewhat-large-size TV set instead of buying a expensive digital TV set. (For instance, if you look around you could probably find a 28-inch analog TV set for under $200 or so.) For this first option, in order to hook up to your existing TV set or to a new analog TV that you plan on buying, you will need to choose between getting a Matrox video card with dualhead ports or getting a video card with the TV OUT.

I would suggest that you look into getting a Matrox video card with the dualhead ports such as the Matrox Millenium G550 card with DualHead ports (click here to look at various Matrox video cards). The Matrox Millenium G550 card is a very nice card that in my opinion is probably the easiest card to set up in hooking up *BOTH* a regular PC monitor and a TV set to your PC where you can play video on the PC monitor in a regular windows environment while *ONLY* showing the video from a DVD movie, MPEG movie, DivX movie, or video from a TV Tuner card on the TV set. A Matrox dualhead card using its "DualHead DVDMax" setting would send only the video of whatever movie, video recording, or TV show you may be watching *WITHOUT* any of the surrounding windows to the TV set. Don't let that "DualHead DVDMax" setting name fool you because it applies to any video and not just to DVD video. When you connect the Matrox Millenium G550 card to a TV set and a regular PC monitor at the same time, there are a few things that you will have to know that are not too apparent when reading the manual. First, assuming you are looking at the back of your PC at the Matrox card where the DVI port is on the left side and the VGA port (the "HD15 port") the right side, you will have to hook up the PC monitor to DVI port using the DVI dongle / adapter (a.k.a. DVI-to-H15 or DVI-to-VGA adapter) which comes with the Matrox card. Second, you will have to hook up the TV set to regular VGA port (the "HD15 port") using the TV output adapter cable (a.k.a. the "break-out-cable") where you hook up either the S-Video cable part of the adapter cable or the Composite cable part of the adapter cable to the video input on the TV set.

Hooking Up Both PC Monitor And TV Set
To The Matrox Millenium G550 Card With
DualHead Ports: Connect PC Monitor to
DVI port on left side using DVI adapter
and connect TV Set to VGA port on right
side using TV output adapter cable.

Then you have to go into the Display Properties in windows, click the Settings tab, click the Advanced button towards the bottom of that Settings tab panel, click the DualHead tab of the next panel, expand the "Features" part of the tree, click the "DualHead DVDMax" on the tree, in the "settings" section below the tree click "DualHead DVDMax" in that "settings" section, click the button below that for "Change Settings", check the box for "Use DualHead DVDMax", then click then keep clicking OK to finish. It may work right way, but you may want to reboot your system. Be sure that you have both your PC monitor and TV set turned on before booting. Then turn on your media player such as Windows Media Player or PowerDVD and play a video or try turning on your TV software -- and then whatever video is playing in that application's window on your PC monitor should be showing up as only the video portion on the TV set. What is nice about the Matrox Millenium G550 card is that it is not only easy to set up (once you figure out how to set it up) is that it takes care of any overscanning problems where you don't have the video picture surrounded by a black border all around the video on the top, bottom, and sides of the video picture like what you may get with other video cards with the TV OUT port -- you may have to use other third party software to providing overscanning when using other video cards with the TV OUT port. Instead, the Matrox cards does it all for you and you can specify that only the video portion go to the TV set which is what a lot of people want when sending video to a TV set while also maintaining a windows desktop on the PC monitor.

If you also want your PC's audio on the TV set, you will have to connect from your PC's sound card to the TV's sound input -- you may need a splitter as well as a stereo-jack-to-RCA adapter to have the sound going to both your PC's speakers and to the TV set.

One interesting application that I was recently using was when building a PC-based Karaoke system with the Matrox Millenium for playing Karaoke SVCDs where on the PC monitor I would be using PowerDVD to control and navigate the PowerDVD menu for selecting which Karaoke videos to play where only the Karaoke video appeared on the TV set. A DVD movie and DivX video also played just fine on the system showing only the movie on the TV set while the PC monitor had the software application with a video window. And testing a cheap TV Tuner card also played fine. You can click here to check out the Matrox line of video cards.

FOURTH OPTION:
GET A VIDEO CARD WITH A
TV OUT PORT SO YOU CAN
CONNECT A TV SET TO A PC

A second option is to get a video card² with a TV OUT port. But don't confuse a video card (with TV OUT) with a TV Tuner card. A TV Tuner card is for watching TV on a PC. Although I will definitely tell you that getting a TV Tuner card would be worth your consideration, you don't have to get a TV Tuner card if you don't want to have TV on your PC. Also, note that you already have a video card in your PC -- whether that be an actual video card that is inserted in a slot in your PC or a "video card" built into your PC's motherboard but the chances are that video card does not have a TV OUT port on it.

To make this a little clearer about the difference between a video card with the TV OUT versus a TV Tuner card: Here is a question from an actual email message that was sent in. If you are asking something like: "I have a video card with TV OUT and I want to know if it would be possible to hook a VCR up to my computer and watch movies and TV without getting a TV Tuner card?" No, you need the TV Tuner card to get the TV signals INTO the PC -- whether you are tuning IN the TV signals from an antenna, from cable TV, from a VCR, from the TV inside the VCR, etc. Any TV OUT port on a video card would send the video going OUT of the PC to the TV set. I can understand any confusion since the cards deal with TV one way or another -- but one card goes one way and the other card goes the other way. Perhaps another way of putting is to say that TV OUT on a video card goes OUT and TV Tuner cards go IN.

So using a video card with the TV OUT will let you see whatever you would normally see on a PC monitor on a TV set. In other words, with the TV OUT, whatever you see on the PC monitor "should" be what you see on the TV set as a twin clone simultaneous image so to speak. However, if you have any problems getting TV video from the TV card on the PC to show up on both the TV set and the PC monitor, like if you only get a pinkish purple display on both the TV and the PC monitor when you are expecting to see TV reception on both screens, then you may have to set the TV to be the primary display and disable the PC monitor (you may have to literally disconnect the monitor from the PC) to get the TV video from the PC to show up on the actual TV set.

When you set up the connection to the TV set, you should have the PC monitor hooked up first so you can do all the settings. And once you have the TV set recognized by the PC, then you should be able to disconnect the PC monitor from the PC, reboot, and then the PC should see the TV set as your primary monitor until you reconnect the PC monitor -- although you may have to fiddle around with the settings in Windows when you have Windows showing up on the TV set to configure the TV set as the primary monitor. Windows and your PC should detect all of this automatically, but you should probably set everything up while you have the PC monitor hooked up to the PC even if you want to, or have to, disconnect your PC monitor later on.

Video cards with the TV OUT typically use a S-Video cable or a RCA composite cable (with the phono plugs) to connect to a TV set. Then you plug into the RCA inputs on the TV set -- the inputs may be labeled VIDEO IN or TV IN (for the video) and Audio IN (for the audio from your sound card). If you have video input for S-Video on the TV set and if you have a TV OUT port for S-Video going out, then you may want to try an S-Video connection from the TV OUT to the S-Video input on the TV set.

But which video card with a TV OUT port to get? I have experience with the GeForce4 MX440 card and also with two versions of the "GeForce2 MX200" card also known as the "NVIDIA GeForce2 T200" (with the "T" for "TV OUT"), also known as the "Siluro GF2 T200," and also known as the 3DForce2 MX-32TV card. Various versions of the NVIDIA-compatible GeForce cards with the TV OUT may either have only an S-Video connector with a adapter cable for hooking up a regular RCA composite video cable or the card may have both a S-Video connector and a RCA composite video connector (no need for adapter cable) that you can plug into. For this particular card, you will have to go into your Display Properties, go into Settings, click Advanced, click the TwinView or the NView tab and clone the screens (note that another card may have a different setting process), and then you should get your PC's video on both your PC monitor and on the TV set. As well as seeing regular Windows on both the PC monitor and the TV screen, you should at least be able to play video files and DVD movies which should show up on both the PC monitor and the TV set. However, if you have problems getting TV video from the TV card on the PC to show up on both screens, like if you only get a pinkish purple display on both the TV and the PC monitor when you are expecting to see TV reception on both screens, then you may have to set the TV to be the primary display and disable the PC monitor (you may have to literally disconnect the monitor from the PC) to get the TV video from the TV Tuner card on the PC to show up on the actual TV set. You will have to go into the TwinView tab (or NView tab or whatever other similarly named "View" tab under the Advanced tab) and play with the settings. You can click here for other information about TwinView. You can click here for a USENET post about a possible registry fix for Geforce pink screens. And you can click here for another USENET post about the perhaps simplier fix by clicking the setting for the Fog Table Emulation in the settings for a Geforce card.

Many NVIDIA-based Geforce video cards have the TV OUT port as a S-VIDEO port, but you may only have a RCA Composite video input (usually yellow) port on the TV -- and you may be using a simple SVIDEO-to-RCA-composite cable and as a result then what you get on TV may be in black & white and not color. The solution there is when you are in the Geforce/NView Display Mode (or TwinView) part of the advanced display properties is to right-click the TV display on the properties panel (you should see a PC monitor and TV on the panel) and on the context menu that pops up then click "Select TV Format" and then click "Advanced..." at the bottom of the menu list of different TV formats. Then on the TV settings panel, go to "Video Output Format" and select Composite video-out. It may be on auto-select but you will want to force it to change in order to switch from the S-VIDEO setting to the Composite video-out setting.

Note, if you have two or more TV Tuner cards and a GeForce2 video card all installed on your PC, you may not be able to turn on the TV for two or more TV cards with TV windows displaying on one screen all at the same time -- i.e., you may only be able to watch only one TV on the screen with only one TV Tuner card at a time -- but if you have only one TV Tuner card, then you don't have to worry about any issues about using multiple TV Tuner cards and a NVIDIA GeForce video card. Also, although you may only be able to display only one TV window at a time (whether as a window or in full-screen mode), the other TV cards may be operating in background off-screen doing something like recording a TV show at the same time. For NVIDIA and GeForce cards, if you connect a TV set to the card, you may have to make the TV set into the primary display in order to have the TV picture appear on the TV set which may be connected to the NVIDIA GeForce video card's TV OUT port. Also, you can use the TVTool software with NVIDIA GeForce cards for putting the TV picture from your TV Tuner card on the TV set connected to your NVIDIA GeForce video card's TV OUT port.

For those with ATI Radeon video cards, I've had some limited short experience with an ATI Radeon card and to get the TV to appear on a TV set, I followed what can be found in the user's manual: In the windows control panel, double-click the Display icon, click on the Settings tab, click on the Advanced button which should be towards the bottom of the panel, click on the ATI Displays tab, click on the TV button, click the enable/disable button, and click OK or click Apply to save changes. For more instructions about the ATI graphics video cards, you can get your user's manual guide for your ATI video card by clicking here.

(A related topic for multiple monitors is how to show different applications on different monitors. Windows does provide what is called an "extended desktop" where in a dual monitor situation there is one-half of the Windows desktop is on one monitor while the other half is on another monitor. And there is the aforementioned cloning of the screen to show the same screen on both monitors. But what if you want one application to only be on one monitor and another application to only be on another monitor. Well, you may want to check out the Ultramon shareware software and see if you can use that software program to show particular applications on only one monitor instead of using the somewhat limited "extended desktop" setting.)

When you try setting up the TV set after connecting it to the PC via the TV OUT port, you may have to manually go into the "Control Panels" in Windows and go into the "Add New Hardware" to manually add "Generic Television." You may possibly have to either try hooking up from the TV OUT on the PC directly to the TV without any other device in-between --OR-- you can try hooking up from the TV OUT on the PC to a VCR and then to the TV so that the video card with the TV OUT can detect that there is some sort of "TV set" is connected.

Whichever card you get, be sure to read the instructions carefully so you can figure out how to get the connection to the TV set to work because you may have to go into the settings to get it to work. Note on the display resolution (this goes for both PC-to-TV with the cards discussed on this page and also for TV Tuner cards): if you get a black border around your picture, first look in the software settings for your card as to whether there is a particular setting you have to click to force the display to go full screen when you want it to go full screen. Typically, the analog TV set (when watching regular TV reception as received by the TV set) does what is called "overscanning" where you lose 3% to 10% of the picture along the edges (borders) of the screen by stretching the actual picture beyond the actual borders of the screen of your TV set. If you look at different analog TV sets, you may notice how some analog TV sets show more (or less) of the TV picture along the edges than other analog TV sets. The PC may be giving you back that percentage when you get the borders. So, if you see those black borders, you may have to set your display resolution to a lower (or higher) setting -- I see this problem most particularly if you have a high display setting such as 1024x768 or more likely when set much higher -- your PC monitor may be able to handle it but your TV (or your TV Tuner card) may not. Just try different display resolution settings whether higher or lower to see what happens. You may also want to check the settings for your card (either your video card or your TV Tuner card) to see if there is a setting to force a particular resolution setting when you go to full-screen TV mode. Some people have also had success with TV OUT video cards to stretch the screen to fill the borders by using free third-party software such as the TVTool and VLive TV Out software programs. You may also want to see if there are an settings on your TV set (such as any onscreen settings) that you can access to adjust the size-length-width of the TV picture.

If you also want your PC's audio on your TV set, you will have to connect from your PC's sound card to the TV's sound input -- you may need a splitter as well as a stereo-jack-to-RCA adapter to have the sound going to both your PC's speakers and to the TV set.³  (On another note, You can click here for a different discussion on connecting a TV-tuner-card-equipped PC-TV system to various other connections.)

THESE LINKS ARE FROM
ACCESS MICRO (AM),
AND TIGERDIRECT (TD).
SORRY FOR ANY EXPIRED
LINKS. PLEASE VISIT
AGAIN FOR UPDATES.

FIFTH OPTION:
GET A DIGITAL TV SET
WITH A VGA CONNECTION

The fourth option is to get a good digital TV set that has a VGA port that can accept a direct connection from a PC -- in other words, you would connect the regular VGA connector from the PC to the digital TV set instead of connecting to a VGA computer monitor. Make sure that the digital TV set can actually accept a computer VGA connection -- read the manual for the digital TV set to make sure and ask the salesman at whichever TV electronics store you get the digital TV set from. These particular TV sets would include flat panel TVs, widescreen TVs, HDTVs, etc. Go visit a good TV & electronics store near you to do some hands-on research to educate yourself on actual digital TV sets, and ask the salesman there about input connections on digital TV sets particularly with regard to VGA connections. Depending on whichever digital TV you get, either you will be able hook up directly from the VGA port on the PC to the VGA port on the HDTV -or- you may need to buy a VGA-to-component transcoder / converter to hook up from the VGA port on the PC to the component video input on the HDTV. You may want to do a search on the internet to look at HDTV displays and look to see which ones have the VGA input, component video input, S-Video input, and regular audio-video inputs. But again you may want to be sure to read the manual to see if it specifically states whether the HDTV display could be used with a PC via a direct VGA connection or not -- if it says no then you don't want to do anything that could void your warranty. You may also want to do a search to see if there is any discussion about using a particular HDTV with a PC. For instance, there are AVSforum users who are using direct VGA connections. What could be happening is that the manufacturers of HDTV may want the consumer to buy HDTV receivers to go along with the HDTV displays. But what else can go into those VGA input ports other than a PC? Nonetheless, be aware of this issue. The alternative is to try doing the aforementioned component connection if you want to be on the safe side.

Do a search on the internet to see what are the available digital TV sets that you may currently find for sale in the marketplace. And then decide on whether you should get a digital TV set at a local store near you or whether to purchase one online. For whichever digital TV set that you are possibly considering, getting this type of TV set will cost you a good amount of money, so you will have to take your time doing your research both online and at actual stores to see if you actually want to spend the money since we're talking about at least maybe a few thousand+ bucks (and most likely a whole lot more than that) for a large good-size quality digital TV set of some sort. There was a wonderful Best Buy print advertisement illustrating this dilemma as to whether to spend the money to buy a really expensive digital TV set: In the ad, there's someone who looks to be a 20-to-40 year old married guy who is wearing glasses standing in a TV electronics store looking at a crystal-clear widescreen digital TV set and he's says to himself that he has to talk to his wife about getting that new and really expensive TV. He says, "I mean, look at that picture. It's so clear. Even with my eyes. That's it! I have bad eyes! I need this [expensive widescreen digital TV set] for health reasons." So, of course, talk to your better half about whether to get a really expensive TV (even if your only good reason is for the health reasons that the TV would be better for your eyes.)

Also, you may also want to consider a projection system if you want to build a Home Theater that has a screen and a projector instead of using a HDTV set, a large screen TV, or some other TV set.

RELATED: FOR THOSE ASKING ABOUT
GOING THE OTHER WAY AROUND
SUCH AS CONNECTING A VIDEOGAME
CONSOLE TO A VGA MONITOR

¹   What is discussed on this page is not necessarily for those folks who are interested in getting video on Tablet devices such as the Tablet PCs. There are USB TV Tuner cards that could possibly be used with Tablet devices if there are compatible drivers. Keep in mind that Tablet PCs are really somewhat new and that the PC-TV video enthusiast may have to come up with a customized solution. (You may instead want to use the Tablet or even a PDA device as a remote control for your large screen television and for receiving interactive TV Guide information where you simply use the Tablet or the PDA as a smart handheld TV-guide remote control device.) However, perhaps the best solution for sending video to a Tablet PC device is via a wireless streaming media solution such as could be cobbled together with streaming media software from SnapStream. Why do I bring this up? Some folks want to send video out from their PC-TV systems to not only a TV set but also to other devices in the home such as Tablet PCs. Since they want to send "video out," they get mixed up with the TV OUT port which goes out to a TV set. They really want some sort of "video input" since they are more concerned with getting video into their mobile PC devices. But if you want to look at Tablet PCs that receive TV, you may want to look at what Sony is doing since they came up with such a device within the last year or so but I think it may only be available in Japan.

²   Note on terminology: Saying "video card" is the same as saying "video graphics card" or saying "graphics card" -- these can generally be considered interchangeable terms that people have been using throughout the years.

³   For cables, wires, and other audio-video electronics accessories, you can click these links to search BetterCables.com, BestBuy.com, and GoodGuys.com.

NOTICE: Ruel provides many free links seen on these pages. If you buy anything, your purchases would be from a linked third-party website(s). The links are for your convenience since everyone asks for suggestions about products. The products should come with their own guarantees and warranties. As for return policies, the various online vendors who are linked should have return policies -- look at the specific vendor information carefully and decide for yourself what card, device, or other product you may want to get.