Bring It On Home: Tips for Easy PC/TV

by Jim Mikles
Winter 1998/Spring 1999

So you're convinced that bringing the full-blown power of the Internet, DVD movies, CD-ROM software and 3D gaming to the living room is a worthwhile endeavor. You want the power, convenience and control you can get from hooking your PC to your TV.

The fact remains, though, there is a fundamental hurdle to combining the silicon and CPU processing power of the PC with the convenience and comfort of the television: TVs are very simple to use and computers aren't. The learning curve to basic proficiency on a TV is about 20 seconds: Turn it on, turn it off, change the channel, change the volume. The learning curve on a computer is substantially longer. Most average computer users spend months learning the basic skills of the operating system, the Web browser and the various pieces of software they need to make their machines worthy investments.

To optimize a PC for the TV requires some middle ground between the two. You don't need to understand database programming to have a worthwhile PC/TV experience, but you do need to plug your sound card into your home theater speakers and optimize your Windows icons and Web browser so you can read the menus and URLs. Along these lines, there are several things you can do to make a PC friendly enough so it fits in to the living room's more relaxed and comfortable environment.

PC Components

In the previous issue of Smart TV, we featured a Buyer's Guide to couch-friendly PC/TV components (Smart TV, Summer 1998), including good PC/TV video cards and wireless input devices. To quickly recap, for basic connection with the TV you need:

About the same processing power, RAM, memory and peripherals as you would require on your average desktop. Processors and RAM get cheaper all the time.
A DVD-ROM drive and an MPEG decoder (to play DVD-video, although computers with blazing CPUs in the 350 MHz range can decode with software).32x CD-ROM is cheaper and affords plenty of gaming and audio opportunities, but no DVD movies.
A scan converter (either external or internal).
A keyboard and mouse extension cord, or a wireless input device (recommended) to control the system from the couch or recliner.

The scan converter on the PC will have a video-out jack that sends a video signal to the TV. The audio will come from the PC's sound card. For video, one of the best scan conversion products we've run across in our extensive experimenting with these things is the ATI All-in-Wonder and PC2TV lines of internal cards. These cards offer very clean 640x480 resolution on a typical TV screen. The cards also feature Rage 2 3D acceleration. Rage 2 isn't the highest-end 3D acceleration technology available, so if killer gaming is the intended end use, Canopus, Intergraph and others offer premium 3D with TV-out jacks (at a more premium price). With any of these cards, you will lose some of the 3D effect on the TV, but it's still rendered pretty nicely. For infrared wireless input, the wireless trackball models like the Sejin FreeBoard series, and U.S. Electronics and KeyTronic brands offer good quality and good value. There are plenty of other combinations that, depending on individual circumstances and preferences, will work equally well.

Cabling

Once the PC has these basic components, connecting it to the TV can happen in a couple of ways. For ease of use, consider connecting the PC to one source input on the TV and the TV/VCR signal to another. This means you receive the TV signal (from cable, satellite or antenna) on one channel (input Source 1) and you use the PC on another channel (input Source 2). The name of the inputs varies between TV manufacturers, between Ext 1, Aux 1, input 1, source 1, etc., or else uses channel 3 or 4, like a lot of VCR connections. Higher-end televisions will have three or four input sources to choose from. Different inputs are commonly selected from a button on the remote, or from an on-screen set up menu. Televisions typically have three general categories of source inputs to receive a signal. Most will have at least composite and coaxial inputs. More expensive models will also have S-video, which sends the video signal on two separate channels (color on one and black and white on the other) and provides a higher quality video signal. The newest, most expensive models also have component input, which breaks the color down even further and provides the highest quality picture. There are no scan converters on the market at this point that have component output and it is primarily meant for DVD-video and other high-quality digital video sources. The PC's scan converter will hopefully support composite and S-video (most good ones do), so cable the scan converter to the TV using the appropriate cable (or run it through an RF modulator, sold separately, if your TV has only coaxial input) and the video is connected.

Don't confuse tuner cards with scan converters. Even though some are included on the same video card, most aren't. The Hauppauge and ADS brands of tuner cards, for example, are some of the most popular. They are more affordable precisely because they don't have scan conversion onboard. If you intend to use a tuner card for a PC/TV--which is especially nifty if you are running Windows 98 and want to tap the full potential of the WebTV for Windows options--it requires running the TV signal through the PC. This isn't a problem until your Windows 95 or 98 crashes or freezes up and you're stuck troubleshooting an operating system instead of watching the baseball game. A bit of advice: split the TV signal and run one source into the PC and another into the TV (see Figure 1).

The Sound

Good audio is also a critical ingredient for good PC/TV and comes from connecting the PC's sound card to the home theater's stereo receiver. The solution requires two things: first a good sound card, and second a cable with a single, stereo mini jack on one end (like those used in personal stereos) and two phono, or RCA jacks, on the other end.

For sound cards, the SoundBlaster series by CreativeLabs is one of the most popular (www.soundblaster.com), and Apex, Diamond, MediaTrix, and Yamaha also make sound cards for various needs. The cable is easy to find at most electronics outlet retailers. With a PC wired into a stereo system, it's also possible to record on cassette tape the growing number of digital audio files available on the Internet (please see our new column on Smart Audio, page XXX).

Those Old Windows

The trickiest part to constructing a smooth-running PC/TV is optimizing your Windows display. Start by bumping-up the font sizes. Do this at the Display Settings box. Right click on the desktop, select "Properties," select "Appearance," then click on the "scheme" box. Pick one of the schemes that has the word "large" or "extra large" beside it. Next, under "Display Modes," set the refresh rate to 60 MHz and the desktop area to 640x480 pixels. Under "Settings" set the desktop area to 640x480 pixels. The color settings will depend on the video card you have installed, but 256 colors is a good baseline to start with. Some new video cards, like the ATI PC2TV or All-in-Wonder, have actual "TV" settings to select, which is an easy way to set the system for optimized TV viewing. This configuration will work well for most regular NTSC televisions. Some new televisions handle 800x600 pixel resolution, and some of the new TV-VGA monitors can go even higher.

Browsing

For Web browsing, it's easy to configure newer versions of Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. For Netscape, launch the browser, go to the Edit menu and select Preferences. Click on the "Appearance" tab, select "Fonts," and then pick a larger font size for Web page text to be displayed (14, 16 and 18 point all work well, depending on how big your screen is and how far from the TV you usually sit.) The last thing to do is click on the "Use my default fonts" option. Whenever a Web page with text is displayed on the TV, it will have larger fonts.

For Internet Explorer users, launch the browser, go to the "View" menu, select "Fonts," then "Larger" or "Largest." The text size will automatically be increased. Neither of these methods will allow the most aesthetically pleasing rendering of all Web sites, but it shouldn't affect a good TV-friendly site and it is the best way to read them. Text that is embedded in a graphic will not be affected by this method.

Special Considerations

There are only a few products out there pre-packaged with a homegrown PC/TV in mind. Wireless RF transmitter/receiver systems, for example, send a signal from the PC to the TV via a radio frequency signal, to help you avoid some of the cabling hassles you might encounter moving a PC tower into the living room. A piece of software originally designed for his type of product, but now sold on its own for PC/TV do-it-yourselfers, is Living Room Active by Vidam Communications. Living Room Active is an interface that sits on top of the Windows desktop and makes the environment more easily navigable from the couch. Large navigation buttons and a custom Web browser and e-mail program built on MS Internet Explorer makes Living Room Active the only commercially available software of its kind.

The Disclaimer

As we've said before, having a PC connected to a TV in the living room is a wonderful way to enhance entertainment and information gathering. We will also be the first to admit it can also be a real pain to set it up. When you run into a problem, start with the easy stuff first. Check the cables, check the inputs and make sure all the connections are good. Make sure screen resolution is set for 640x480 pixels and refresh rate is set for 60 MHz to start (many scan converters won't display anything on the TV at all if these settings aren't correct). Next, check the PC device drivers under the device manager ("Program," "Settings," "Control Panel," "System," "Device Manager") for compatibility and conflict. When that fails, beat your head on the wall for awhile and then call your computer geek buddy to reload Windows, fix the interrupt conflicts or do whatever other resuscitation is needed to get the thing going. Just don't give up. Once you've worked out the bugs, you'll be happy with the results.

Jim Mikles is Smart TV's senior editor.

Manufacturer List

ADS
www.adstech.com

Apex
www.apex.com

ATI
www.atitech.com

Canopus
www.canopus.com

Creative Labs
www.creativelabs.com

Diamond
www.diamondmm.com

Happauge
www.hauppauge.com

Intergraph
www.intergraph.com

KeyTronic
www.keytronic.com

MediaTrix
www.mediatrix.com