The Hearts Center is “breaking new ground” this fall with its first-ever video broadcast during the three-day Harvest Conference! The broadcast will originate from the Wingate Hotel in Bozeman, Montana beginning Saturday, October 10th and continuing through Monday, October 12th.

We anticipate that most people will attend the conference via our live broadcast, and we want to provide you with the best possible viewing experience. So we are offering the following tips for viewing the conference via a large plasma or LCD TV or a bigscreen projector that you might have available. The benefits are that you can participate in a more comfortable setting (like your living room!) and you can invite other heartfriends to join you.

There are a number of different ways to get the video and audio from your laptop or desktop computer to display on your flat panel TV. What you must do is look at the back of the TV and at the back of your computer and see what ports are there and find a match. Then you simply need cables that are long enough to connect them and do some tests before the big day of the conference so that you are confident and familiar with how to set it up. The cables you'll need are often available at a local Radio Shack or Best Buy. And we are providing a video here which is identical to our broadcast in order for you to test your setup at a time that's convenient to you. Below are some possible options for connecting the video and audio of your computer to your TV or projector:

The most common way to connect a PC is a VGA port like this one. The port will look like the picture on the left and the cable end will look like the picture on the right. The ports on both your PC and your TV will probably be like the one shown--so you will probably need a cable with Male (pins coming out) at both ends of the cable--a "Male-Male" VGA extender cable.

The above picture is a very typical "PC Computer Input" of a Plasma or LCD bigscreen TV. The port on the left is the "Audio" port, which is how you get the sound from your computer in the TV, so that the sound of the broadcast will come through the big speakers in the TV. You'll need a cable called a "1/8 inch Stereo Mini" cable to connect the audio. A picture is below:

1/8 inch Stereo Mini cable for audio

Some TV's might have what is called RCA ports for audio input. In that case you'll need the following combination of cables. Note that most computers use the 1/8" Stereo Mini, and you will be connecting the "Headphone" or "Speaker-Out" port of your computer (sometimes green-colored) to the TV audio input. RCA to 1/8" Stereo Mini-cable looks like the following:

RCA to 1/8" Stereo Mini combination of cables--you might be able to find this translation in a single cable. But be sure that it's long enough to reach from your computer to your TV....

You may not have a VGA port in both your computer and your TV. In that case you'll probably be able to connect the video in one of the following ways:

DVI port and cable end (above). Once again, you'll probably need a "Male-Male" cable to connect. But check the backs of your TV and your computer and take notes for yourself before going to Radio Shack.

HDMI port--This is a high-definition TV cable which conveys both video and audio.

 

S-Video style port and cable--This conveys only video.

After you get the cables connected you will need to change the "Source" on your TV to the alternate ports you're using to connect your computer. You'll probably find the "Source" button on the remote for your TV. With the computer on and cables connected, press the Source button to cycle through the possible input options your TV offers. On one of them you'll see your computer desktop.

Once you get the video and audio from the computer to show on your TV, use the link at the top-right of this page to test your setup. If you use a PC, once you get the test video going, you can enlarge Windows Media Player to full screen by clicking on the title bar of the program with your right mouse button and selecting "View - Full Screen" (shown below):

 

If you use a Macintosh and QuickTime Player to play videos, you can enlarge the video by selecting "View - Double Size or Fit to Screen" (see below):