Using Mac Screen for Other Viewing

[canesheadcase]

Hi I'm a college student and am looking for an alternative to buying a new tv. I have a MacBook that has a nice enough screen and quite frankly why buy a new tv when you already have this nice monitor, right? So my question is if there is any way to use the monitor from my mac to watch tv, play xbox, etc. Basically plug in either a set of RCA Cables or whatever the case and view it on my laptops screen. I've been google'ing around trying to find a solution but I'm finding mostly outputs from the laptop (such as movies that are on the laptop and then viewing it on a different screen) or other weird video importing software which will mostly likely lag I would think. So if you've done this or are familiar with a way to do this I'd love some help in finding a solution, thanks.

 

[Technochicken]

No, you can not. If you had one of the new iMacs, then yes, you could, but otherwise you are out of luck. The only way this might be possible is if you had fairly extensive knowledge of the inner workings of electronics, bought an expensive DVI to LVDS converterr, ripped open your macbook to get access to the screen's cables, and soldered the LVDS connector to the appropriate wires within the LCD. I'm not even sure that it uses an LVDS input, but many laptops/all in ones seem to. Even if this physically possible, I would not advise trying this for obvious reasons.

As an alternative, 19" or so monitors are available for around 100$ these days, and with the proper cables this could easily be hooked up to your xbox and your mac.

 

[canesheadcase]

That seems to be the consensus around the web... The only other alternative would be sort of tricking the computer into thinking it was a webcam or something like that but that would probably include significant lag (and I'd have to buy a camera) at which point it would just be easier to buy the monitor already...haha