Hello,
I interested in cutting the cable and watching good quality video from my internet connection. Now I'm not interested in pirating anything, I am interested in what equipment is needed to watch video, say from Netflix (I'm on a 2 week free deal right now), on my digital TV and maybe on other analog TVs that are in the house?

I just picked up an S-video cable to hook my laptop up to my digital TV but the picture leaves a lot to be desired. I've been told that high dollar game players come equipped to accept Netflix online but that's a pricey initial outlay and I'm not a gamer.

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RickN
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Windows media editions of XP, Vista and 7 should be all you need. If you have 7 ultimate you already have what you need.

Depending on your monitor you picture may be great or it may suck. I dont know.

To use it on a TV, just an HDTV cable from your video card (or an S-video) cord plugged into the back of your TV is all thats required. NETFLIX works the same way also, you can internet stream it the same way. (without a gamer system)

If you do not have these ports (HD or S-Vid) on your video card, get a new one. Most PCI-E cards have them built in. You can also use that HDTV as a monitor if you wish.

ATI has the "All in wonder" video card that works wonders too.

[This message has been edited by htexans1 (edited 05-26-2010).]

My TV is a Philips 42" 120hz. I had a great picture with everything especially HD until Comcast took HD off my package. My internet is DSL, my laptop is a Compaq Presario, do you think that either my DSL or my laptop is dropping the ball on signal quality?

S-video isn't really suitable for HD. That alone would be one issue. If your TV has VGA inputs you would probably have a bit more luck. Better still, if your computer had HDMI output you would have the best luck...

Like Tommyrocker said, DVI or HDMI will give you a noticeably better picture than VGA or S-Video. You can do it with Windows Media Center or Linux/MythTV. In either case you probably want a minimum of 2gigs/ram, 2.2ghz dual core processor and 512megs video ram. You can do it with less, but you will sometimes run into problems. If you are going with Linux, use an Nvidia video card.

Check out the HDHomerun for your tuner.

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[This message has been edited by williegoat (edited 05-26-2010).]

Single core processor will work fine as long as you don't try to do anything else with your pc while you're streaming video.

quote Originally posted by RickN: Hello, I interested in cutting the cable and watching good quality video from my internet connection. Now I'm not interested in pirating anything, I am interested in what equipment is needed to watch video, say from Netflix (I'm on a 2 week free deal right now), on my digital TV and maybe on other analog TVs that are in the house? I just picked up an S-video cable to hook my laptop up to my digital TV but the picture leaves a lot to be desired. I've been told that high dollar game players come equipped to accept Netflix online but that's a pricey initial outlay and I'm not a gamer.

When you say "high dollar game player" do you mean a Xbox 360 or PS3? That would certainly rule out buying a new PC.

What hardware and operating system do you have? What are you working with?

I hope you have at least a duel core computer with 2gig of memory or you will not be very happy with how slow it runs. You also need a braodband connection at least 1 Mbit connection.

Then you need a decent video card. If you don't have one, you can buy one that will do the job for $50. It won't be the latest or even close to the fastest but a nVidia 8XXX card or Radeon 3XXXX card should get the job done. The important thing is that you need a DVI or HDMI output.

I would recommend you get a TV tuner card too. Most of them come with a remote. You can buy a cheap single tuner card for $50 as well.

If you can't say off the top of your head what your computers specs are, or if you bought it more than 3 years ago, I'd say it won't really be built to handle it.

You can pick up the cheapest model Xbox 360 (arcade) for something like $200. I'm not exactly sure if free Live users can stream Netflix or not (if it turns out you need an Xbox Live account, it costs like $45 through Newegg... I think that's a year subscription).

Its a pretty simple thing to setup, though. Plug and play (if your router has automatic DNS and DHCP services enabled).