PC on Television pt 2 (Computer)

My computer is not outstanding. I primarily built it for daily computer activity and video editing. I always say that my next computer purchase will be a mac, but then I end up sinking another couple hundred upgrading my pc.

Ways to watch your PC on your Televsion:
There are many ways to set up your pc for television viewing and DVR (digital video recording).

• Make a MythTV box. It by far isn't the easiest, but most popular. A general knowledge of Linux is mandatory. Making one of these for the sake of making one is on my list of todo.
• For simple viewing of your video files on your television, you can modify an Xbox or purchase a current xbox360 or a ps3. By putting it on your network you can easily transfer files to it. It is a very nice setup, but with my option you can capture video onto your computer.
  
• Using the output of your video card to watch on television. Which is the simple way I did.

My PC has a mere 500mb of ram and a 1.53 gig AMD Athlon. My video car is a Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X. I picked it up from a "Gamer" friend a couple of years ago for 50 bucks. I find it useful to know "Gamers". It is by far the cheapiest way to score equipment that is out of date for "Gamers" but overkill for VJs. They upgrade almost every 6 months. This card has S-video out and S-video in (10 years ago was the best way to transfer analog video). With the S-Video breakout cable there are also composite in and out, but we won't acknowledge that. It also has DVI output along with a standard VGA to do dual monitors out of the box (I will explain how I utilize that feature later).

I prefer to use Ace Media Player for my video watching. This player is a media player that utilizes any codecs on your pc. This makes it simple to click on any file and put it in the playlist. However, if you watch a file that is in a anamorphic 16:9, it does not "crop" it to fill a 4:3 screen. It leaves it in a "scrunched" view. Luckily a majority of the video I watch is in a standard 4:3 or is a cropped 4:3 aspect ratio.

I setup my video card to output to the television. I can also setup "hotkeys" with my video card so I can simply hit ctrl-m and it will switch from my monitor to my television.

With this simple setup I can watch easily watch videos on my television using the cables I laid under my carpeting towards my television. With a few added bells and whistles I can make my viewing better.

more to come....