Instant Movies on the Flatscreen

I hope everyone had a great weekend and a wonderful Halloween!

Evelyn and I have recently spent the money necessary to hook the laptop (Macbook) up to the LCD flat screen TV in our living room so we can watch movies and tv shows on it when we wish. It's really been quite a novelty lately and the initial fun hasn't wore off just yet. We had a movie marathon yesterday, taking a break from going out and from Halloween parties. We're signed up with Netflix and we've got the plan where you can watch movies instantly as well. That's been the coolest feature that's available as of yet. We watched everything from documentaries, to romantic comedies, to stand up comedy, and a drama. We can also catch up on tv shows as well if we have time (depends on the work week).

The way you go about doing this is first, you have to buy a cable that will hook your computer up to your tv. This can be done with a vga cord or an hdmi cable, depending on which your computer has. HDMI is better quality and allows for a digital signal to be transmitted from the laptop to the tv. The other cords you will need is for your audio. We have a separate set of computer speakers that we hook up to the laptop (in to the earphone or audio out 1/8" plug in) and that works magnificently. The only other cords or additional accessories that you may want are a wireless keyboard and mouse, which I picked up at Best Buy (no financial interest of course) for about $40-50 and that allows me to sit on the couch and surf that web without having to get up (oh yes, sedentary American-ism).

So, all told, this set up cost me about $119 (had to buy an additional converter cable for my Mac to VGA cord) and I feel that it's been well worth the cost. We no longer have a cable bill, so that pays for the upfront cost in a couple months as it is. Plus, it's just kind of fun to be able to surf the internet from your couch in your pj's on a big screen tv. It's cool for listening to music as well. You can just flip on the computer speakers and have music in the living room while cooking or cleaning up the house.

That's the latest in our home/tech forays.

Have a great Sunday.