Using a laptop as a monitor

R

redCashion

Member
I have the HP HDX laptop, and I bought it more or less to use as a monitor for my XH A1. The laptop is sold as an entertainment unit, and has alot of ports and input jacks, but I haven't figured out how to get it to hook up to my XH A1. I even took it into a local camera store that sells the XH A1 and after testing some different configurations we weren't able to get anything to work (though it may just as easily be a lack of understanding of the media controls on the laptop as anything else).

The laptop has these ports:

I/O ports 4 Universal Serial Bus (USB 2.0), IEEE 1394 Firewire, expansion port 3, TV out (S-video), Integrated Consumer IR (remote control receiver), 5-in-1 digital media card reader, microphone-in, integrated stereo microphone, eSATA port, HDMI external port, RJ-45 (LAN), VGA

I don't think the HDMI is useful, is there any way to use the VGA to work with the XH A1?

Thanks a bunch..
 
You don't say what software you are using on the laptop to do this.......

It's very unlikely that the laptop will just appear as a monitor to the camcorder unless you are running some software designed to do that - i.e. take a firewire stream and display the video on the screen.

So, that would be the next thing.... what software are you using?
 
This isn't an ordinary laptop, it's a multimedia center so my belief is that one of the ports/jacks would work just like with a TV. The laptop gets TV signals, has a TV remote, and uses Windows Media Center so I think that one of the inputs will allow me to just feed video to it like I would a TV. The problem is that on my TV I'm using a component cable, and I don't have the same inputs on my laptop. But I'm hoping that one of the other inputs will work..
 
At a guess I'd say most of them connections are outputs not inputs, you could use the 1394 as an input for monitoring but you will have 1/2 second lag
Russ
 
Russell Pearce said:
At a guess I'd say most of them connections are outputs not inputs, you could use the 1394 as an input for monitoring but you will have 1/2 second lag
Russ
Click to expand...

....and probably need some software too.... unless it has software that is specifically designed to take an IEEE1394 video stream and display it on the screen, then you will still need to buy some software, regardless of what hardware is there, and regardless of what other software is there. IEEE1394 is not a 'normal' TV type input.
 
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Your "Multimedia Center" laptop is just a way of computer sellers 'branding' the computer as a unit geared towards multimedia operations, primarily playing music and watching movies with the appropriate software and necessary ports (mostly outputs). What you need to make your lappy a camera monitor is firstly a IEEE 1394 firewire port on the lappy and same on the camera (DV)
The lappy will recognise the camera when you plug it in to the computer but to get a live feed on the lappy like on your cams LCD you'll need to run a program called Adobe OnLocation, previously called Serious Magic DV Rack.
This gives you live video feed from the camera on your computer with the ability to view the video signal using a waveform monitor and many other professional setup features for achieving high quality imaging. You can also record the video to the hard drive instead of using the cameras DV tape..
It's a cool program and very helpful.
Hope this helps you...
PS> As Russ said above there is a slight lag in the video feed from the Firewire connection and is only really a problem is you are needing to view from the firewire feed while operating movements of the camera.. Make sense?
 
Like Slinkii said, no matter how powerful your laptop, it's not going to give you the performance of a desktop computer. Don't expect to get real time refresh rates on your laptop screen either....it will more than likely be very stuttered. I have a similarly loaded laptop and OnLocation runs slow. Also, if you are shooting outdoors in bright light, it's going to be difficult to see the screen without some kind of shade.
 
redCashion said:
This isn't an ordinary laptop, it's a multimedia center so my belief is that one of the ports/jacks would work just like with a TV. The laptop gets TV signals, has a TV remote, and uses Windows Media Center so I think that one of the inputs will allow me to just feed video to it like I would a TV. The problem is that on my TV I'm using a component cable, and I don't have the same inputs on my laptop. But I'm hoping that one of the other inputs will work..
Click to expand...

Does the TV tuner have a regular cable input..... if so you could try getting an adapter for the cable coming from the camera to convert it over to a F connector and plug that into the laptop; Then use the software for the TV tuner. It might not work, but it be worth a try and probably the cheapest option if it does work.
 
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