Help hooking up a hard drive to a TV?

Question

This is what i would like to to do.
Buy a 500 gig harddrive and put all my movies and cds on it
then hook this hard drive up to a TV/surround sound so i can listen and watch my movies
can i do this an easy way?or will i have to hook up a computer and just run it from the computer to the tv?and if you have the answer and idea on price or where to look for parts?

Answer 1

Yeah I'm afraid you need a computer to control that hard drive. Windows media center PC's are the popular things out there right now. However Apple is releasing something tenativley called iTV which attaches to your TV and lets you stream movies and music from the computer you already have over a network.

I don't think a lot of information has been released on this device yet but I'm sure it will be talked about at the MacWorld conferance next week. So keep your eyes out.

Answer 2

Ok, so what you mean is to hook a computer to the TV, not just the hard drive.

Yes, it can be done. What you will need is a TV card, or NTSC translator. The signal which comes out of most SVGA graphics cards will not view well on a TV which is NTSC. So, having an NTSC converter means you can just hit PLAY on y our computer and turn on the TV.

There are many types, both internal and external. Here is one that will do it all for you.

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/PC-TV_video_adapter.html

Answer 3

There is no truly simple way to do this. You can not directly hook the hard drive up to the TV because you need something to process what is on the hard drive and send video signals to the TV. You will need a computer with a graphics card that has at least one video output. You will also need a sound card with one audio output. Here is a good article on how to connect your TV and your computer: http://www.techlore.com/article/10061