An Inexpensive Way to Add Media Content to TV
Posted by Steven Richardson on February 25, 2009
Hulu.com is a great site for viewing all sorts of current and archived TV programming content, but people often dismiss it by asking, “Who wants to watch TV on your computer?” My response now is, “You don’t have to!” I found a great way to enable me to watch Internet video content on the flat screen in our family room, and you can do it too.
Do you have a laptop with wireless Internet access? Does its manufacturer sell a docking station for it? If the answer to both these questions is “yes,” then say hello to Hulu! I got a docking station for my HP laptop and plugged it in next to the TV. From that station I ran audio and video cables to the TV, along with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Then I attached the docking station to the laptop. That’s it! Now you can use the TV as your monitor and control the PC to watch any streaming video through the Internet. Since then between On Demand content from our canble provider and Hulu, we never miss most of our shows. Now I just have to figure out how to watch shows recorded on my media PC in the den over the home network.
In addition to doing that, I added the Shared Pictures folder on my den PC to the watch list for Windows Media Center on the laptop to run slide shows on the family room TV. Plugging in the USB infrared receptor to the docking station also allowed me to use my Media Center remote to control the PC, rather than the mouse. Now, at parties, we can both impress our friends and bore them to death at the same time! The next big project is to figure out how to run audio from the laptop to the stereo system in the family room, so we can stream mp3s as well.
Give it a try! You’ll never leave your family room again!
