HDTV <> PC Connection

Today, I was happy to find that for a mere $13 I could hook up my laptop to my HDTV!

Sound and picture work seamlessly. Specifically, instead of the sound coming though the laptop's built in speakers, it's transmitted to the HDTV via the earphone plug. The picture connection is via the laptop's built in monitor plug.

The connection is via a product called an HD15 (SVGA) Male + 3.5 Stereo Male at both ends. I bought it via Amazon.com.

To be precise, this cable doesn't work as is for my laptop. It works for Mary's laptop. The reason is this—the sound connection is part of the picture connection; to put it another way, they're on the same cable. As such, it requires that the distance from your laptop's earplug connection to its monitor connection be about 12". On my laptop, that's not the case (at least not cleanly). On Mary's it is.

That said, I can remedy it easily by buying an extension cord for the earplug connection. No biggie.

The payoff for this effort is this—now we can watch Netflix and Hulu.com on TV instead of exclusively on a laptop monitor. Nice!