TV as monitor?

[dcoon81]

Looking into buying a mac mini, however, I have a quesiton first. I have a Sony Wega 27" flat screen TV, with s-video in ports. Will I be able to hook up the TV to the mac mini to serve as my monitor? If so, what type of adapters do I need, and what will the quality be like?

Thanks in advance.

D

 

[symphonix]

Yes, you'll be able to use the TV as your monitor.
You'll need the Apple DVI to Video adapter: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M9267G/A

You may also need a standard audio lead, depending on the type of connectors you have, but the mini-jack to RCA lead you'll want is available just about anywhere, including most supermarkets and discount stores.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Actually, everything you need comes with the mini.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Look on the right-hand side under "Let Mac mini Entertain You."

 

[lurk]

Just remember that the picture will suck.

 

[Captain Code]

I've done S-Video to my TV and the actual screen output is terrible, trying to compress all those pixels into a small resolution TV. But video looked pretty good on the TV.

 

[alexandr]

what if you have a fairly new flat-scrren TV with a VGA input - will that change anything concerning quality? i mean, is it the adapter/S-video wich causes the quality loss, or is it the TV itself..?

maybe the real question to be asked is, is there a (big) difference between the screens on computer monitors and TV-monitors? pardon my lack of know-how on the subject..

alex.

 

[lurk]

That depends o if it is a HDTV or not. The problem is that normal TVs have about the resolution of 480 x whatever which is terrible. On top of that there is a difference in the way that the pixels on the screen are designed. A computer monitor is designed to have sharp divisions between pixels so that text is clear. Tv's on the other hand have sloppy pixels that bleed into each other. This actually makes the low resolution picture look better but if you ever watched normal TV on something like a HD LCD set you can see just how bad the original is.

 

[alexandr]

so the clue to buying a combined solution is to get a HDTV, that is??

just as a sidenote - how will, for instance, the apple cinema displays work as a tv if i got one of those tv-cards, or eye-tv or whatever...? a tuner, i guess... would this be nice or not?

 

[lurk]

Even hdtv is not very good for use as a monitor when it cones down to it. The simple truth is that they are optimized for different things. One you sit close to and the other you sit far away from, one needs crisp lines for text and the other benefits from diffuse pixels, one is tuned for stationary images and the other for moving ones.

That said a cinema display would certainly work as a TV the problem is that you will see very clearly how crappy the original signal is. ;-)