laptop to hdtv

[mcaulayj1]

i have a sony vaio laptop with two wd external hard drives, both full with .avi films (around 700mb) and .mkv hd films (around 4.4 gb) some 720p and some 1080p

i also have a samsung 32" hdtv which i have connected to my laptop via vga to vga, as my laptop does not have dvi.

i was wondering how much quality i am loosing this way? is there any settings i can change to improve this?

my laptop screens resolution is 1080x800 and sometimes the hd films look better on this?

also is there a way to burn the mkv files onto disc so i can play them on my new phillips dvp5960 as it will not work via usb?

i know alot of questions there but thanks for any time you take to reply.

[redwudz]

It's difficult to compare a computer monitor (Laptop screen) to a TV screen. They use quite different methods of display. There may be some 'tweaks', but I don't know of any. Others may, though.

And just going to the larger display may change the characteristics of the video displayed. The only 'rule of thumb' I know is to always try to use the native resolution of any display.

I doubt any set top player will display MKV, AFAIK. You can convert it, but then you will have quality loss.

[JimboS]

This may sound stupid, but 700 mb of AVI is maybe 5 minutes of video..
And your external drive is FULL???????????
AVI is about 13 GIG for an hour of video...
HD-AVI about the same (give or take some)

[Richard_G]

This may sound stupid, but 700 mb of AVI is maybe 5 minutes of video..
And your external drive is FULL???????????
AVI is about 13 GIG for an hour of video...
HD-AVI about the same (give or take some)

700 MB of DV avi is about 5 minutes but usually when anybody talks about a film taking up 700 MB in avi format they are referring to a DivX or Xvid compressed film to enable it to be fitted on a CDR. The quality of these is so abysmal that displaying it on anything bigger than a cellphone will look horrible.

[mcaulayj1]

i have around 300 films all 700-800mb and dvd like quality, all look great on 32" tv.

any answers on the connectivity?