So I need some help getting my movies to play on my TV. The tv is an LG 42LK530T and my movies are in a load of different formats (.mkv,.avi etc) currently stored on hard drives in my desktop pc.

I have a laptop which can feed video to the TV through an HDMI cable, but have no idea how to get audio to play through the TV this way. Also connected to the TV is a PS3, but I don’t know how/if it is possible to stream HD .mkv files through this as it is all over a wireless network and I presume this won’t be able to cope with the high bit rates.

A final option that I know about is plugging a usb stick directly into the tv, but the problem with this is that the tv only supports .divx and .mp4 files- I don’t know an easy way to repack my files into these container formats, and can’t be bothered re-encoding them all.

Does anyone know of an easy way to get the films and audio to play through my tv?

Cheers,

Im no buff, but have started looking into this and something that caught my eye that I dont quite understand involves a sound bypass connector from your Mobo to your graphics card which then allows your graphics card to send sound along the HDMI I think. But someone much more knowledgeable than me might be able to clarify

You could look at one of those Popcorn boxes that advanced mp3 player sell.

sounds interesting, but that would have to work on my laptop as the desktop is in a different room.

ill have a little look into it!

Also – why would you want to put the audio through your TV – if you want to use your laptop then get a decent soundcard – like an Echo Indigo – and feed the sound into your hifi.

Movies deserve at least decent stereo as there is normally quite a lot of effort put into the soundtrack which adds a surprising amount to the movie.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WHDI-HD-TV-PC-Video-HDMI-Wireless-Transmitter-Receiver-/250836321607?pt=UK_ConsumerElectronics_WirelessVideoTransmitters_CA&hash=item3a67028547#ht_5531wt_902

this is something else I was looking at, but I think Im going to go with 5m HDMI cable run through the floor. My Windows Media remote control is wireless, not IR so will work 5m away on the floor below.

Some laptops only send video down the HDMI cable. I have a feeling Macbooks are like this. If you have one of those, you’re stuck with either a)getting a connector box that takes audio + video port one end and outputs a single HDMI (they are quite expensive), or running separate audio cables.

On most modern laptops though, there is a setting that lets you send audio down it too. Will be in control panel, sounds, playback, or similar. Set HDMI audio (or apparently sometimes SPDIF) as the default sound playback device.

eg. http://www.ferdychristant.com/blog//archive/DOMM-7AVS5E

Or you may be able to set which playback device is used somewhere in the settings of your video playback software.

You can use TVersity (free) to stream pretty much anything through your PS3. It’s what I do, only with an Xbox. It transcodes on the fly; my wireless copes fine but I’ve told it to drop the resolution from HD because the PC is a wimp. How it would perform at 1080, I’ve no idea.

There’s also a PS3-specific application, called “PS3server” or something, but I’ve no experience of this cos, y’know, Xbox.

Using the laptop directly is going to be better qualty, but as JM says, some don’t push audio over HDMI (my Dell doesn’t, either). The way round this (assuming you don’t have a better dedicated output) would be to connect the headphone jack to AV connectors on your TV / amp with something like this – assuming you can set up the TV to accept audio and video from different sources.

The audio on most laptops/PCs is pants – even if they say they have HD audio – the noise floor is junk.

Go for one of those Echo cards – they are seriously good.