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Ask HN: Connect Laptop to TV without HDMI

by naveensky on 6/23/13, 12:58 PM with 4 comments

Hi,

I am looking to use my Samsung Smart LED TV as an extended display for my laptop but wirelessly.

I am surprised that there is no option available to me except connecting via HDMI wire or purchase a WIDI device (which will only allow streaming videos). I also read a lot at http://www.dlna.org/ but it seems there is no option available.

Does any of you have any experience building a Raspberry PI based device which can help me extend my screen via wifi. If you can guide me to correct resources, I would love to work on this

Naveen

  • by ippisl on 6/23/13, 2:15 PM

    There's splashtop 2 , which lets you remote desktop your pc to an android tablet , and will work for games if your pc is strong enough. As far as i can tell(from some google research) it's the best one for games in the market.

    If your TV can run android apps, you might be set. If not, there are plenty of set top boxes or hdmi plugs that run android. But choose one that would be fast enough.

    Regarding doing it alone: as far as i can tell, efficenly compressing the video on a pc with low latency and decoding it on the other side is a hard problem, not a side project.

    And if you try,i think it would be wise to use something stronger than raspberry pi ,as least for starters.

  • by a3n on 6/23/13, 3:25 PM

    You could turn the problem around somewhat. Have a small but powerful enough computer on your LAN that's connected via HDMI to your TV. Now log in from your laptop over your LAN to the small PC and have the TV be (one of) the small PC's display device.

    X.

  • by jacksondeane on 6/23/13, 1:14 PM

    The upcoming OS X Mavericks release will support external displays over AirPlay and AppleTV.

    http://www.apple.com/osx/preview/#multiple-displays