[madawu]

Hi,

As a newbie, reading this forum in the past 3 days is very educational. Please answer one more question for me.


What happen if I set my laptop resolutiont to 1024 x 768 and connect my laptop to the RGB input of Front Projector, said sharp 9000 or panny 711? Will they recognize the signal? From their specs, they seems to be compatible with XGA signals.


If it is compatible, does it show XGA signals progressively, or not?



Many thanks.



mada

 

[Gary McCoy]

Yes, you could get a progressive display from any projector with native XGA resolution, the ability to bypass the internal projector scaler, and a 4:3 aspect ratio. If the laptop has a DVD-ROM, you could even show movies using a software DVD player. However, laptops have some drawbacks:


1) Laptop video is not upgradeable or replaceable as are desktop PCs with discrete video boards. You are more or less stuck with the features and video quality you have until you replace the machine. The later laptops have video chips such as the ATI Rage Mobility that are a couple of years behind the state-of-the-art in video performance.


2) There are very few laptops with digital sound capability - so forget surround sound to go with the movie. There are a few USB surround solutions but they do not work real well.


3) I have yet to see a laptop with a built-in TV tuner. The USB TV solutions are analog TV only, USB does not support digital or HDTV.


4) Expect to spend 2X the cost of a desktop system less monitor for a laptop computer.


5) Laptops typically exist for a reason even if it's only E-Mail. HTPCs exist for dedicated video and audio applications - and are far more stable than multi-purpose PCs. Nobody wants to fight with Windows to watch a football game.


Gary

 

[Stanton]

Having tried this (briefly), I have a couple of thoughts to add to the (previous) excellent reply.

1) Even if you went with an HTPC (because you just can't get the sound out of laptops), it's difficult for the rest of the family to use.

2) If you really want RGBHV connectivity, consider getting a Cinematrix mod (or DVD player); they put RGBHV outputs on the back of your player that you can use to drive TV's and projectors with just a simple VGA converter cable.

I ended up with one of these Cinematrix mods and enjoy 720p (not just 480p) DVD video into my Princeton HDTV. Eventually we might see these outputs on DVD players just as we've seen the standardization of the progressive component outputs (which are *definitely* different than RGBHV).

 

[madawu]

Yes. but lapton will do slide show, surf the web, play games... and most importanly, I can carry it everywhere in the house.


Stanton: what is cinematrix mods? If the DVD data is recorded using 480p resolution, what is the benefit to up-scale it to 720p? Even you have more lines, but those 240 lines are calculated from its adjacent lines, right?