Buying new tv for daughter. Please help me with selection. Need to know Connection types for computer!?

Question

I am buying a new tv for my daughter. I just recently bought a Vizio 37" for the living room and like it very much. But I need a smaller one for my daughter. I want to buy a 19" (or maybe a little larger) LCD tv. On my current tv I have the connection to be able to plug my satellite into it and also plug my computer into it. I want to do this for her too. I think I found one I like...but I need to make sure it has the connections. Don't need to buy it and it not be what I need. I know there's s-video, and composite and a whole bunch more...but what are the names of the connections I need on the tv to plug in my cable/satellite and her computer. Thanks!

Answer 1

VGA is the most popular i believe, though you can get signal converters for just about any type of connection (VGA to PAL, ariel and such) but a thing to remember, you probably already know this but the quality can degrade quite badly on a tv, due to the bad pixelation, even though the TV is bigger

Answer 2

For future compatibility you want to make sure that the TV has at least a couple of HDMI/DVI inputs. These are becoming the standard way to send HD video between computers/cable boxes/satellite receivers and HDTVs.

HDMI is basically DVI plus sound; there are cheap adapters to convert between these.

You need to find out what kind of video outputs your daughter's computer has. Most likely it is DVI, VGA, and/or S-video.

If the computer has a DVI output, all you need is a DVI/HDMI cable and an adapter plus some sound cables.

If the computer has a VGA video output, you will want to make sure that either the TV has a VGA video input or that you upgrade the computer to have a DVI/HDMI video output.

Some computers will have an additional s-video output. The signal quality of s-video is limited compared to VGA & HDMI/DVI. If you want to use it for some reason, make sure that the new TV has a s-video input.