Why You Should Try Connecting Your Laptop To Your TV

Connecting a PC to your TV is dead simple. All you’ll usually need is an HDMI cable, and then you can access every media service, streaming site, and PC game — on your TV. The TV can even be thought of as a big computer monitor. It could be used as a secondary monitor for your PC’s desktop or make a good big screen for a presentation

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But using a PC in your living room isn’t as awkward as it sounds, and you gain an extreme amount of flexibility:

Play Local Video Files: A PC can download and play local video files easily, too. You don’t have to copy them to a USB stick and then connect that to the streaming box in your living room, worrying about limited media codec compatibility. VLC can play practically everything.

Play PC Games: PCs give you access to a much wider universe of games, so you’re not stuck playing whatever version of Angry Birds comes with your Roku or the handful of games available for your Fire TV. Just fire up Steam, connect an Xbox controller, and play some proper games.

All You Need Is An HDMI Cable

To connect a laptop or desktop to your TV, you just need to connect an HDMI cable to the HDMI-out port on your PC and the HDMI-in port on your TV.

Laptops make this extra easy, as you can just carry the laptop into your living room and set it down within cable length of your TV. With a desktop, you can hook everything up next to your TV.

With some laptops, it won’t be quite this simple. Many laptops don’t have a full-size HDMI port to save space, so you may need to adapter cable. This will vary from laptop to laptop — perform a web search for your laptop’s model number and “HDMI out” for more information. If your computer or TV is old and doesn’t support HDMI, it may support VGA or something similar.

Controlling Your PC

Now you can view your computer’s screen on your TV. A wireless mouse and keyboard — either using Bluetooth or a USB receiver — are convenient here, allowing you to control the interface from across the room. If you want to play PC games on your TV, you can plug an Xbox controller or similar game controller into your PC and treat it like a game console.

There are specialized interfaces to make this better. For example, the Kodi (formerly XBMC) media center software provides a media center interface for your TV. Steam’s big-picture mode makes launching PC games easier. But these interfaces aren’t really necessary — just firing up your web browser, going to a streaming service’s website, and entering full-screen mode will give you the interface you need. For local files, VLC or another media player software is good, too.

It’s just like computing in general — smartphones are great, portable devices, but sometimes you need a PC to get the job done.