Comments on: Free-For-All Friday 2/15/13

By: smalltowngal

smalltowngal — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:14:12 +0000

Brad, thanks for taking the time to respond. The only things I watch using the laptop are programs streaming at websites that are not available via Roku (which I do have), e.g., last night’s episode of Downton Abbey (because my antenna only picks up Ch 8 about 10% of the time and never when I want to watch it).

Maybe what I’d better do is fire up the laptop and see what the streaming quality is like, figure out the resolution issue, then determine how I can connect it to the TV. (Just checked and the TV does not have a VGA connection, after all.)

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:47:15 +0000

STG, it is feasible, but may not be worth the trouble… I would check the following out before you make a call on it.

Audio:

I assume you need sound too? How will you output from your laptop to TV or receiver?

Physical Connection from Laptop to TV:

If your TV does not have a VGA connector, you will need some kind of VGA to DVI connector (assuming you can do DVI on your TV). You need to determine what the max resolution you can send to your TV is via VGA. If your laptop is old, might find that it just won’t do the job for decent streaming.
Re HDCP (copy protection stuff for downloaded movies) – not sure this will work via VGA to DVI, maybe someone who knows more can comment.

Media Server:
Do you intend to stream Netflix or similar? How does it look on just your laptop screen?
If you have a bunch of videos to stream, you can use iTunes home sharing or set up a media server like ‘Plex’.

If all of that is too much trouble, take the plunge and get Roku or similar for less than $100. Granted I am still in the honeymoon phase, but we got it about a month ago and think it is choice.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:57:58 +0000

Before FFAF closes, has anyone had brakes done at the Pure Station downtown? Or, more generally, can anyone recommend a trustworthy brake shop in the area that fixes what’s broke and goes easy on the sky-is-falling upsell?

By: smalltowngal

smalltowngal — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:40:15 +0000

Another random technology question…
For watching streaming video on TV, would it be feasible to take an old laptop that runs XP and dedicate it to that purpose? The laptop works, it was just retired because it has a skittish power port (so needs to stay put all the time or it jumps spontaneously onto battery power). It does not have an HDMI port — it has a 15-pin, and 4 USB ports.
(Laptop has insufficient oomph to run later versions of Windows and not worth upgrading because of the power issue. On my second one since this one, but have a strong and totally irrational sentimental attachment to it, or it would have gone on freecycle long ago.)

By: smalltowngal

smalltowngal — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:28:20 +0000

“Why try and make something nice into something ugly?” — to attract traffic to the website. That is why I wish people wouldn’t post stuff on FB to point out “Isn’t this ridiculous/stupid/lame/untrue?” and whatnot. It just encourages more people to go to whatever site it is, which is why crap gets published in the first place.