So I recently bought a 22" HD LCD Television with the intent of using it to play my xbox360 on during college. I saw that it had a VGA cable port in the back of it and noticed my laptop also has a VGA cable port on its side.

 

I was wondering, could I technically use this television as a second monitor if I were to buy a simple VGA cable and connect the television to my laptop (and obviously go through the settings and appearance stuff to hook it up)?

 

I mainly want to know because I don't want to buy a VGA cable and then have it not work. Unfortunately, my parents got rid of all my old desktop CPUs and monitors, so I couldn't find a VGA cable lying around to test this.

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Just one question: What's the Make/Model of your Laptop?

 

[Edit: Most new ones should be able to, but knowing this would help.]

 

~D. V. "Hmm?" Devnull

Edited August 24, 201114 yr by D_V_Devnull

It's a Presario CQ61 Notebook PC made by Hewlett-Packard. It says COMPAQ on it.

 

If it is possible, is there a specific type of VGA cable I would need since its an LCD tv or something? I'm looking at cheap ones on amazon.com.

No, any VGA cable will do.

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No, any VGA cable will do.

That's the beauty of standards. :D

Just got a look at an image of the laptop. I third this. :thumbsup:

 

~D. V. "Yup, you're fine with any standard VGA cable!" Devnull

It should look OK, but it would look better if you fed it via DVI or HDMI.

 

I have an LCD monitor that looks hella sharp on the DVI jack, but looks godawful fuzzy when I connect via the VGA jack (particularly the fonts).

^ I want it to look sharp, but I don't think my laptop has a DVI or HDMI port (I'm not real knowledgeable about these things, so don't jump on my ass is those don't even exist on computers, heh). Enlighten me if there's a way.

 

If I'm stuck with hooking it up with a VGA cable, then I'll buy a cheap $4.00 off amazon. If I don't like it, heck, it's only $4.00.

 

Thanks guys!

Watch the shipping prices; often you can find more expensive cables that end up being cheaper than the cheap ones due to free/low shipping.

I'm guessing there are different sub models of that model you listed, in one picture I saw it had a port shaped like an HDMI port but it was blocked off, maybe some of those do have HDMI out. pic

 

 

Regardless you should be fine with VGA.

Oh, that's an HDMI out socket? Mine does have that, but it has a plastic thing over it. Does that mean I can't use it, then? (it's like the one in the picture you posted)

Oh, that's an HDMI out socket? Mine does have that, but it has a plastic thing over it. Does that mean I can't use it, then? (it's like the one in the picture you posted)

Correct

With my laptop I've used both HDMI and VGA with my 37" HDTV and there isn't a whole lot of difference although HDMI looks sharper. You should be fine with VGA. As far as I know, the only difference between both of them is VGA not having sound. Maybe that's because I have a quality VGA cable.

With my laptop I've used both HDMI and VGA with my 37" HDTV and there isn't a whole lot of difference although HDMI looks sharper. You should be fine with VGA. As far as I know, the only difference between both of them is VGA not having sound. Maybe that's because I have a quality VGA cable.

 

Digital vs analog

With my laptop I've used both HDMI and VGA with my 37" HDTV and there isn't a whole lot of difference although HDMI looks sharper. You should be fine with VGA. As far as I know, the only difference between both of them is VGA not having sound. Maybe that's because I have a quality VGA cable.

 

Digital vs analog

I do know it is Digital vs Analog, it's not because I didn't mention it that I don't know it. I just didn't think it was worth mentioning here.

I got the VGA cord in the mail today. Tested it out, and the quality was pretty poor. Also, for some reason the tv wouldn't display the colors/brightness/contrast correctly (even after I tried messing around with them from the tv menu). And none of the resolutions given as options from my laptop would fit the tv screen perfectly.

 

Well, at least I have a VGA cord lying around to use. :P Thanks guys for the help.

I read somewhere that the quality of the VGA cord has to do with the quality of the picture, something to do with the analog signal, where digital always have good quality even with a poor quality cable. If anyone can confirm or correct me on this.

 

As for the image not filling up the screen, I know what you mean, I do not know what causes it, but I know that my laptop doesn't fill the whole 37" TV screen (borders on all 4 sides), but does not have any trouble on my parent's 32" TV, while my brother's laptop, much stronger than mine, does not have these borders, so I don't know if it has to do with the graphics of the laptop seeing as I have an HD 3470 in my laptop and my brother has a GT560m.

Try messing around in the Nvidia/Ati control panel and see if you can change the resolution on the TV.