What's best? VGA to S-video, component, or hdmi?

Question

I want to watch my laptop through my TV. My tv has hdmi, s-video, and component inputs. My laptop has vga.

Is it best to get the HDMI converter? Will the video quality be blurry? All the reviews I have read for converters the customer complained about it being blurry. What kind of video quality will I get?

Answer 1

Great Question!  

Your laptop may  have S-Video output, and if so, perhaps you could try that.  It will be "blurry" as well, but in a somewhat different way, one that may be preferrable to "the converter effect."

VGA converted to HDMI is not a good idea, as there is something known as "scaling" to contend with, and only relatively expensive video scaling devices can do justice there.  

You could also convert the VGA to analog component video, but in any of these conversions there are likely to be artifacts.

Finally, there's the laptop end of the equation you might consider. Rather than modifying your existing one, this would involve a different laptop, one with either DVI (older, less expensive) or with HDMI (newer, costlier).  Then you problems would be over.  

How lucky we are to have such problems in this world, eh?

Answer 2

In general, the quality of connections is as follows

Cable (worst)

S-Video

Component Video

HDM

Your  best quality picture will come from using an HDMI converter as it will allow a higher resolution from the use of your laptop.