Watching movies on TV from my PC

The best way is to use an HDMI cable, (assuming your board or card has HDMI), as that transmits sound as well as video. You motherboard might argue with you about the resolution, if the board is IGP. Intel Sandy Bridge graphics were asking for only 720p to be used, (with a monitor in use also). I can't specify what the max might be for any specific add-in card.

Intel's graphics driver would take you through the process of setting up the TV.

My favorite way of doing it, (when I bother), is simply burn .Mp4 files to a DVD, and shove it in my freestanding Blu-Ray player. (The player accommodates formats other than Blu-Ray or standard DVD-Video files.

I'm surprised you're asking this. "HTPCs", (home theater personal computers), have been all the rage for quite a while. With HDD capacity being multi-terrabyte as it is today, you can stuff a great may DVD files on one of them.

A one terabyte drive with single layer DVDs, would hold perhaps 220+ files. dual layer DVD would be about half that.

I'm and old stick in the mud though, and I still use free standing players.
 
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It is what I use my old Windows XP desktop for. I have it connected by a vga cable to a 32" lcd and my laptop will do the same job via an HDMI cable. You'll most likely need a separate audio cable and may need to set the screen resolution to custom. I had to install an older XP graphics driver for the nVidia card to get it to work with my desktop..
 
It is what I use my old Windows XP desktop for. I have it connected by a vga cable to a 32" lcd and my laptop will do the same job via an HDMI cable. You'll most likely need a separate audio cable and may need to set the screen resolution to custom. I had to install an older XP graphics driver for the nVidia card to get it to work with my desktop..
Ok , xp is not possible. The person I'm asking for has a Vista Home Premium desktop but don't know the type of tv other that it has a BIG screen & does have HDMI to the best of my knowledge. I'll find out more later & post back.
 
By far the easiest way to accomplish this is with a $35 Chromecast dongle. Simply plug the hdmi dongle on into your TV, and then cast anything you can stick in your Chrome browser to the TV screen. As long as you have wifi at home, set up is a breeze.
 
By far the easiest way to accomplish this is with a $35 Chromecast dongle. Simply plug the hdmi dongle on into your TV, and then cast anything you can stick in your Chrome browser to the TV screen. As long as you have wifi at home, set up is a breeze.
AND a powerful computer. On my previous system (C2D e6400) it was unable to reliably send even non-hd flash video, CPU was maxed. On my current i5 4690K it still takes 20-25% load to do it. So on a system running Vista, it is pretty unlikely that chromecasting local video is going to be a smooth experience, at least through Chrome.
 
It's all in the configurations (both the PC & TV), after all bits are bits, bytes are bytes and media files have known extensions and data formats. The challenge is getting access to the data.

eg: I have access from the TV to the PC using standard file sharing. When the firewall (on the PC) is setup correctly, it's an issue of accessing the share\location and hence the specific media(Video, MP4, & graphic formats). My WDTV Live media box makes this trivial and I hope/think Roku would do the same.

W/O the WDTV Live, the TV itself attemps to access Windows Media and I get to pictures, but somehow have yet to master access to the iTunes library.

PC <== hdmi ==> TV is all that was required
 
Raspberry Pi does a creditable job displaying 1920x1080 movies for $40. Plug in the AC, HDMI, and a wireless mouse and your good to go. OS "OpenElec" is good for both Video and Music files.
 
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