Setting up Monitor on Television?

I noticed I have a VGA port on the back of my tv. I was wondering if its possible for me to plug in the monitor and be able to like watch tv on one and like play 360 on the other? Because I plugged in the monitor but nothing shows up on the screen. I prob have to set it up some way or another and I was wondering how I would go about doing that.

 

Sorry but this is not possible . the vga port on your tv is to use your tv as your monitor, i.e.... to hook up your laptop/base unit.

Didn't see you lurking there plodr

 

Yeah, the VGA port on the TV in an input - so as noted above, you can use the TV as a monitor, not to feed a monitor.

 

Thanks guys. Using the tv as a monitor for my laptop wont put unnecessary strain on my gfx card will it? Cause my friend said it blew out his GFX card one time. But he also didnt have that good of a laptop. Or maybe his intergrated gfx card was just old and bad?

 

Graphics cards do not "power" the display (TV or monitor) connected to them, so there is nothing to strain. They just send a standard data-feed down the line.

The only way connecting a TV or monitor to a card's (or integrated) monitor port would cause damage is if the cable or connector was damaged, or misaligned and something shorted. Note for notebooks especially, their primary function in life is to support the road warrior business traveler who must go to different conference rooms and give PowerPoint presentations from his laptop. Those VGA ports on notebooks are there specifically to connect an external monitor/TV/Projector.

 

If you watch video's especially HD video's or blurays on a HD TV it will put more strain on your CPU,I think strain is the wrong word though it sounds like something it shouldn't be doing '@Digarati' its more like it will make your laptop work harder than using the regular screen.

So video card will only work a little harder displaying the larger resolution but your CPU could work much harder decoding HD video content,unless you have a dedicated video card with onboard video decoding.

 

No. Sorry. The size of the screen means nothing.

1920×1080 is 1920×1080 whether the display is a $200 23" monitor at 1920×1080 or a $5000 60" TV at 1920×1080.

The load on the computer placed by the "content" (cable TV, DVD, BluRay, games) does not change because the monitor is a TV or a true monitor.

 

By putting @Digarati I was agreeing with your point about laptops doing what they were designed for I think you have the wrong end of the stick.

And I think your being deliberately argumentative by taking my point about HD TV's out of context,1080p HD Tv's usually have a higher resolution than standard laptop screens which does put more strain on the video card especially if you play HD content at that higher resolution and since the CPU in laptops with a non dedicated video does most of the work of the video card anyway it will work harder.

What your saying is correct,I know give me some credit :confused But it wasn't what I said.

 

Maybe I shouldn't have put it @Digarati like I was telling you something,I was being lazy,I guess that was my bad:cool

 

Come on. Someone disagrees with you so you take it personally and call them argumentative?

I don't believe I took anything out of context. And I am sorry again, but you are incorrect about resolutions. 1080 (1920 x 1080) is equal to, and often not even as high as used on many standard widescreen computer monitors. For example, the "native resolution" for many 24" widescreen monitors is 1920 x 1200.

Samsung 245BW

ASUS PA246Q

Note the OP asked about strain on the graphics card. But again, just "playing" or viewing HD graphics from digital cable or a BluRay player does not tax a computer. It pretty much just passes it through. Viewing video/graphics tasks are nothing compared to the demands placed on a system by serious 3D animated gaming. Remember, fully integrated ITX and µATX motherboards (with surface mounted integrated CPUs and graphics) are used in quality HTPCs all the time as PVRs and BluRay players in high-end home theater systems. I recently used this Gigabyte mini-ITX HTPC Motherboard for a client's HTPC build and it fully supports full HD content at 1920x1200 on his 55" big screen TV. All that was needed was lots of RAM and big hard drives.

So sorry if you again feel picked on or that I was being argumentative. That is not my intent. The correct information is what I care about, and I don't care who provides it.

 

I'm getting off this rollercoaster!:-D

 

Ummm, no. Not so. It makes no difference whether notebook or PC. You are suggesting hooking up a TV to a notebook causes the notebook to work harder than a PC if you connected that same TV to the PC. It doesn't.

 

Oh, now I see you edited your post. Okay - moot points anyway.