I'm thinking of a new HD television partly for displaying pictures for people. I figure if I buy a decent display, it probably should be a TV also in the common part of the house. Digital slideshow. I don't have a laptop and I don't need or want to buy one. The TV and computers are on separate floors of the house. I don't want to burn a DVD every time I showed. Any way to do this wirelessly? Any other suggestions? Most TVs do not have USB or card inputs although a very few do have SD card inputs but not the one(s) I'm interested in. Looking at 32".
They make little all-in-one solutions for what you want to do. A couple hundred bucks will buy you a small box that will play video, music, display pictures, etc. Newegg.com, Buy.com, places like that will have them. I don't know much about the brands because I've never used one.
What I have is a really inexpensive computer put together into a subtle, low-profile case and set in with my stereo equipment. It outputs to my TV so I can play music or videos or display pictures.
mark maulden wrote:
and what happens with a widescreen monitor?
The output resolution of whatever you buy will be set to the resolution of your TV. So there is no stretching if that's what you're concerned about. You'll get black bars viewing an image in a full screen or slideshow mode.
It's true that they're not well suited for portrait viewing but at television-sized viewing, it's still pretty good.
Apple TV... about $250 or so for 160 gig version. Plugs into a usb port on your computer and wirelessly transmits pics, music and the like to a receiver hooked to your TV setup.
AppleTV or even an Xbox360 with HDMI tucked away. Both stream wireless signals and I think the 360 has a decent graphics card. It is, after all, a small computer.
All good ideas so far .. might I additionally suggest that almost every P&S these days comes with a video out cable. If you don't care about style or presentation, just load your photos onto an SD card, pop them into a $100 p&s, hook up to TV and scroll through them.
The only way I could see to do this wirelessly would be thru a WIFI connection (Bluetooth probably wouldn't work).
If you google something like "cheap media PC" there are tons of websites showing tutorials how to purchase or build your own low end PC for showing videos and photos and playing music. You can do this for less than $150.
It takes about 2 seconds.