OK,

I have inherited an Acer L200M MediaCentre ... briefly it's a 3.2GHZ PC , with 160GB HD and 1.5Gb memory. Form factor is shaped as a HiFi unit and it was my intention to attach it to my Philips LCD TV ... and that's where my problems start.

The TV has 6 AV inputs:
• AV1: Scart (Sky)
• AV2: Scart (HD/DVD Recorder)
• AV3: S-Video & TV/Audio In (Pinnacle ShowCentre)
• AV4: Component
• AV5: HDMI (HDMI DVD Player)
• AV6: HDMI

It also seems to have an CI (Common Interface) and an S/P DIF (see below).

The Acer has the following outputs:
• VGA (it's capable of putting out a fairly decent resolution from the onboard video)
• TV Out
• S-Video
• S/P DIP (apparently this is a Sony/Philips digital interface, not sure if that will solve my problem)
• Audio

There is also a TV Tuner card but that has mainly inputs.

According to my TV manual the maximum resolution is 1204 x 768 which pretty much sucks considering it's an 26" HD Widescreen LCD and I'd need a DVI output anyway to convert to HDMI.

I tried S-Video and the quality is simply appalling.

I bought a VGA to component lead and it doesn't register a signal at all (I saw a brief flash of a boot screen then nothing). A friend of mine is sending me another VGA to component lead but I doubt that will work.

What I am after is any ideas at this point because I would love to have a device on my TV that can do BBC iPlayer and stuff like that.

Any help appreciated.

Kyu

VGA to component will only work with certain (mostly fairly modern) graphics cards. Don't know the spec of the graphics capabilities of your laptop but it doesn't sound like it supports it.

You can still use it, but you'll need to use it with an inline convertor box. Unfortunately, these aren't cheap, around £150 is normal:

http://www.cyberselect.co.uk/product/1273

Whats the "TV Out" you mention on the Acer? (ie. What kind of connection? Phono, DVI etc?)

Your best option might well be to upgrade the graphics options on the laptop .... no idea how easy or not that might be.

S/P DIF is for your sound (should be a standard 3.5mm jack). All the other outputs you listed are video only.

No easy fix I'm afraid and as you mentioned, s-video is pretty crap on an HD capable TV.

Oh .... and supported resolutions on HDTV's are almost always lower than the equivalent sized monitor.

It’s a mediacentre PC … shaped like a HiFi unit. This appears to be the same one: ACER ASPIRE L200 ATH64 3200+ 160GB 512MB DVDRW WXP MCE


OK … might be able to get something like it on eBay


I assume it must be the “RCA Composite Video Out”


The unit only has one available slot currently occupied by a TV tuner card … I could replace that since my primary aim is to use iPlayer and similar technologies.


It was the fact that it is a widescreen TV and the quoted resolutions were all non-WS screen that really got me.

Kyu