I have a Sony Vaio laptop with Centrino Core Duo.

It has a DVI-I port. Can I see TV on my laptop?

David Arciniegas, , Australia

The DVI-I port will e an output port. It would normally be used to drive an LCD projector or plasma or LCD screen at very high quality. Your notebook possibly also has a video socket called 'TV-out" which does the same thing at lower quality (but more versatile because it will work with more devices).

I'm assuming that you use the notebook on a desk at home and want to be able to watch TV on full-screen, or in a window o while you're doing other computing tasks. In order to do this a simple way is to use an external USB TV tuner such as one of these on eBay or found from this Google search. Your local computer shop probably has one for sale. I;d definitely be buying a digital tuner, not analog. They cost more but the quality is better and you get wide-screen too.

This is the simplest way to get TV on the notebook.There are other ways to do it , though. You could even have a media server and feed the TV signal to the notebook via WiFi, which would allow you to walk around with it. The USB tuner like any TV receiver) will need a good antenna. That's why it isn't practical to watch live TV on a train, for example.


Paul Zucker