dell laptop to television

[kpn1981]

Please please help me before I lose the will to live!!

I have recently purchased a dell studio laptop and I want to connect it to my tv. I dont care about the picture quality etc, I just want to listen to music from youtube on my television because the sound quality on my laptop isnt good.

I have visited numerous websites today looking for help but to no avail!! The websites have told me to purchase loads of different types of cables and have gone on about an s-video socket (or something!)
So, as you have gathered I am not to "up" on computers! I dont know one socket from the next on my laptop and need descriptions! Yes, an arduous task in itself!

Please can anyone help me with this??
All help is greatly appreciated and thanks for taking the time to read this!!:)

[pangea33]

There is no real need to hook your display to a tv for your situation, since you just want to hear audio. You can simply connect a cable from your headphone jack to the RCA audio inputs on your tv, or to external powered speakers, or to a stereo receiver. Any of these would work for you.

[jlreich]

Which particular model is your studio laptop?

Looks like your laptop has an HDMI output connector (see below). If so, and your TV has one that would be the easiest way because it includes sound over that cable. S-video does not, which I don't think your laptop has one anyway.

So the big question is does your TV have one of these?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/HDMI_connector-female_%CE%940057.jpg/120px-HDMI_connector-female_%CE%940057.jpg

If not, what type of connections does it have? There are usually adapters to get around this, but I am not certain if they will be able to carry sound or not.

Basically we need to know what connections your laptop has and what your TV has. If you are not sure what they are called post the exact model of each so hopefully we can look them up.

I am not real big into this stuff myself, so any others that wish to comment on this are welcome.

Edit - Good thinking Pangea. I was making it too complicated. I would also add that if it is better sound you want can simply go out and get some decent external speakers to hook up to your laptop.

[kpn1981]

ok, so i can ignore the "s-video" thing? what cable do I need to enable me to do this? and whereabouts in my laptop and tv do I plug the cable? On my laptop I have 3 sockets - 2 have the headphone symbol and one has the microphone symbol.

thanks.

[kpn1981]

hi jlreich,

my tv does not have one of those sockets on it, although my laptop does, but it has 15 pins in it and a symbol like "lol" that above it. Next to that I have another socket which DOES say "HDMI" above it.

This sounds really stupid now, but I do not know the exact model of either the tv or the laptop.

The laptop is a dell studio, all I kno is that its top of the range (apparently) how can I find out what the exact model of it is?? Also the make of the tv is "sanyo", i dont know the exact model of this either. Feel really stupid now. Im just not up on electricals!

thanks.