Xigga

Don’t let your HDTV go to waste.  Use it as a monitor.  You can hook up any laptop or PC to your HDTV.  HDTV’s are better monitors than the specially designed monitors for the PCs.  You get higher contrast ratios and a bigger screen!  You can play your videos games, or watch movies.

Your laptop/PC will either have a VGA or DVI connection.  Newer PC/laptops have DVI, older ones (2+ years old) will most likely have VGA.  HDTVs older than 2 years had DVI, but they dropped it and now only have VGA.  DVI was dropped because of HDMI.  Hi-end laptops and PCs will have HDMI, in that case you just need to get the a HDMI cable.  If you HDTV has VGA and you laptop/PC has DVI, then you should’ve been given a DVI-VGA adapter.  If not, then you can find it cheap online.  It’s also possible that your TV has VGA and your laptop/PC has DVI.  You use the same adapter!

Watching movies on the PC is the best thing because they can play any format.  Some of you may have Windows XP Media Center Edition.  You can tell by going to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Media Center.  Just start that up and you have a nice little media center.  You PC may also have a SP/DIF or optical audio connection.  You can hook that up to your receiver and get 7.1/5.1 surround sound.

No need to burn DVDs or CDs anymore.  Hardrives are very cheap these days.  You can get drives that are $0.20 per gigabyte.  Just search around on the Internet.  You’ll find very good prices, and if you’re not in one of those “weird” states, you won’t have to pay taxes.

You can also play HD movies on your computer if it can handle it.  Bluray drives cost about $350-$500 for your computer.  Put one in and you got yourself a Bluray player.  You need a dual-core system to play Bluray movies.

Within a few years HTPC (Home Theater PC) will be the new thing.  It’s puts everything into a nice little box.  But HTPCs don’t have special “technology” to make it better for your HDTV than your current computer.  If your computer has SP/DIF or optical out, then you are good to go.  A decent video card would make it better because HDTVs are 1920×1080 @ 60hz.  The new HDTVs are 1920×1080 @ 120hz, so if you want to get the best of the best, get a good video card that can handle that resolution.