Need bigger monitor for portable dvd player

[ketman]

I recently bought a portable dvd player - Venturer PVS1090, with a 10" screen. It's the only player I have, so I run it off the mains at home as well as via batteries when travelling. It's quite nice for most purposes, but for home use I'd really like a larger screen, especially for movies. It isn't much cop watching Dr Zhivago on a 10" screen. I have no TV and don't want to buy one, but I hoped I might be able to find a monitor - say 15" or 17" - which I could play it through. Unfortunately I don't know much about modern A/V systems, and there might be no such thing as a stand-alone monitor. I do have an LCD monitor for my computer, but I presume you can't use that? If not, can anyone suggest a solution that doesn't involve buying a whole TV?

Thanks

 

[Gazpilot]

Get a T.V card for the PC and run the Venturer through the aux in then use the PC monitor to watch DVD's, you can also get the PC cards with DVB T (freeview).

 

[ketman]

Get a T.V card for the PC and run the Venturer through the aux in then use the PC monitor to watch DVD's, you can also get the PC cards with DVB T (freeview).

Thanks for the tip. I've just been on a search for TV cards to see what they do. One thing: could I use the PC's own dvd player to play dvds, instead of hooking up the Venturer? That would simplify things. But then I'm wondering where your controls, like stop, start, fast forward, pause, etc, would be. (I know very little about all this.)

 

[lynx]

One thing: could I use the PC's own dvd player to play dvds, instead of hooking up the Venturer? That would simplify things. But then I'm wondering where your controls, like stop, start, fast forward, pause, etc, would be.

Try something like Powerdvd (this will also give you the controls you mention). A demo can be downloaded for you to try...http://www.gocyberlink.com/multi/download/trials_1_ENU.html

 

[ketman]

Thanks for that. I'll give it a try.

 

[IronGiant]

I believe you can get a monitor with a composite input, but it may be a monitor/TV combo.

EDIT: perhaps not, sorry.

But if you now want to play DVDs on your computer instead you don't need a TV card, just the software, such as PowerDVD.

If you post the specs of your pc we can let you know whether you can do it on your pc and circumvent the Venturer altogether.

Dave

 

[ketman]

I believe you can get a monitor with a composite input, but it may be a monitor/TV combo.

EDIT: perhaps not, sorry.

But if you now want to play DVDs on your computer instead you don't need a TV card, just the software, such as PowerDVD.

If you post the specs of your pc we can let you know whether you can do it on your pc and circumvent the Venturer altogether.

Dave

It's an ageing system, but I'd upgrade anything I had to. Pentium III, 650 Mhz. 128Mb Ram. DVD-rom. HD - 8Gb (Have to get a bigger one). Floppy drive. Modem. Graphics card, but no sound card. The best part of the system is actually the monitor which is a 15" LCD. I'd get nice picture on that.

 

[IronGiant]

PowerDVD system requirements are as follows:


System Requirements

Operating System: Windows XP, 2000, ME, or 98SE

Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 1024

Screen Ratio: 4:3 or widescreen

Processor: Pentium 4 1.3 GHz, Pentium M 1.0 GHz, or AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz or above*

Memory: 128 MB RAM

Hard Disk Space: 60 MB

Graphics Card: AGP or PCI Express graphic accelerator with DirectDraw Overly Support

Sound Card: PCI sound card or on-board audio

Optical Drive: DVD-ROM, DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo, DVD-R/RW, DVD+RW or DVD-RAM drive with 1394, ATAPI, SCSI, USB 2.0 or Card Bus interface

* - PowerDVD 6's advanced video/audio technologies function better with processors 2 GHz and above

So you can see that your system is a bit slow for the latest version of PowerDVD. If you pm me your address I have an unused older version of WinDVD I'd be happy to let you try out/have, if the movies run OK then you would just need to pick up a cheap sound card. Otherwise a new motherboard with on board sound and faster processor are the order of the day.

Dave