Sound from USB

[Rex]

What ho one and all,

Having just sold my soul to the devil by buying a TV, I want to connect my T21 to it so that I can access internet available films and TV shows..

The TV only has USB and HDMI connections, and as the T21 has VGA, I need a VGA to HDMI converter. I have seen a number of them; some have VGA, a headphone plug and USB for power to the unit.

But I have also seen one that only had VGA and USB for both power and sound. (http://www.cablesdirect.co.uk/search-ca ... VGACAB-USB)

My question is, I was not aware that the USB will provide sound. Would this combined power/sound converter work?

Toodle pip and thanks

Rex

[dr_st]

Yes, USB audio devices exist. If they have it properly implemented, it should work. Your computer will output video over VGA, and audio over the USB device (instead of its built-in audio). The cable should have a converter chip that will merge these into a single HDMI output containing both audio and video.

I am not sure about drivers - whether Windows has native drivers for any USB audio device, or whether a special one is needed.

[Rex]

Thanks. Guess I will give it a try. As it is mail-order, if it does not work, I can send it back for a refund.

Rex

[TonyJZX]

Probably wouldnt bother with all that... use vga for pc and have a set of speakers in the laptop's 3.5mm stereo

also the T20 class isnt very marginal for media playback

[Rex]

Thanks. only doing this because I have the T 20/22. I know that things may not be so easy owing to their age, and if it does not work out, then buy another, more modern laptop.

The alternative, which will work, is to transfer things that we want to watch onto a USB stick and plug it directly into the TV's USB socket.

Will post back when I have thing sorted.

Rex

[brchan]

I wouldn't bother with plugging it into your TV or for USB file transfer. The following are just some issues:

1. Hardware limited to 1600x1200 external resolution. I don't recall my T23 being able to output widescreen resolutions, either, so you will end up with unproportionally stretched images.
2. Hardware is far too old to handle media playback. See http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=69626
3. USB 1.x speeds are going to be very slow, especially for video file transfer. Even if you use a PCMCIA USB2.0 card, you will still need to wait.

[kfzhu1229]

I think if you need it as DVD player it works fine but if you need it as a tv box, forget it. A T43p with Pentium M 780 and 2gb RAM is the BARE minimum for that and even with that Netflix and other DRM content will not play while YouTube (non-DRM contents only) can go up to 720p30.
I would say get a T61pF if you really like 4:3 and get a R500 if you just want it sitting there as TV box
Also yes T2x CANNOT output in widescreen resolutions because their S3 Savage cards don't allow them to do so (and only T23 can output in UXGA 32bit color and even with that it does NOT work with DVI). An A30 is the minimum for widescreen (not sure about the A2x though but A3x is better in this case anyways and even with P4-M in A31p it still has lower TDP than the older top coppermine models)!

[Kasm279]

For reference, it's not adapting USB to audio. It's an audio controller that sits on the USB bus, just like how the two inbuilt ones sit on different busses; in this case AC'97 and ISA.

[ZaZ]

How about a Roku stick or something similar?

[kfzhu1229]

I would say you can get a ThinkPad R500 cheaper than a Roku stick or other TV boxes
R500 should be more than good enough to handle streaming of almost any kind (of course not 2k or 4k)
Then get IBM/Lenovo wireless mouse and/or keyboard variants (case in point I have the oldest SK-8808) to interact with the machine. Also check out the BIOS settings, there may be an option that you can turn the computer on by simply connecting to AC supply or something. If that option is available, get a wireless switch so that you don't have to walk to the TV to turn on your computer