Home PC Upstairs / TV Downstairs

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fishyfishy

New Member
Hi there,

My home PC is based upstairs in my study. I'd like to be able to use the internet on my plasma PC downstairs. The house is fitted out with CAT5 ports in each room.

The PC is new but fairly low spec - i.e. no graphics card. On-board graphics only with one VGA port out the back for a monitor.

The mouse and keytboard are wireless, but I've tried these down in the lounge and they are not able to be detected by the PC (well, remote receiver)upstairs.

Can anyone suggest how I may be able to do this?

The problems I see are:

1) How to get the mouse and keyboard working downstairs? Can I get a second mouse / keyboard and somehow use the CAT5 connections to link the mouse / keyboard downstairs to the PC upstairs? If so, how will this work with the existing mouse / keytboard upstairs? Will the PC be able to handle two mice / keyboards?

2) How to get the TV to act as monitor (it has VGA and 'PC Input' sockets...not sure what 'PC Input' actually means!), and how will this work with the existing monitor?

For '1' above, I've seen various USB-to-CAT5 converters, but wondering how the PC will work with a second keyboard / mouse?

For '2' above, I've seen various VGA-to-CAT5 converters, but I'm wondering how these will work in conjunction with the existing monitor, without keep swapping the two monitor cables over depending upon where I'm sitting.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
FishyFishy
 
I've never heard of VGA to Cat5, but what I can offer you is this. Try to get a long enough VGA extention cable to run it to the Plasma TV. Then get a wireless mouse/keyboard and use that down there. You may want a bluetooth based set, because it reaches farther, but it's not as responsive as RF. Note that if you do run this, instead of keeping switching the monitor plugs, you can also invest in a KVM switch as well. Anyway, what's the resolution of your plasma TV? If it's not good enough, it may not even be worth it for web browsing.
 
There are some wireless and wired video players that can load videos from your network, if that's what you wish to do. I beleive they go for around $200... Otherwise, you'll have to go with a direct VGA connection. VGA and Cat5 are two totally different connections and there's no way to send a video signal though the network...at least not like you're wishing to.
 
The_Other_One said:
VGA and Cat5 are two totally different connections and there's no way to send a video signal though the network...at least not like you're wishing to.
Click to expand...
Yea, that's what I thought. I didn't think such a converter exists, he's probably mistaken.
 
i have never heard of Cat5 either, but the only thing that in have tryed (and it worked) is if your graphics card has an S-VIDEO port on the back, that will plug in to any modern tv. it essentially makes it just like a monitor. My only concern is that you said it was an older graphics card, it may not have
S-VIDEO

The only other thing i can think of is that Very Few tvs have a PC monitor port built into them.

hope that helped!
 
Yes, S-Video is a good option to do so, and Cat5 is a network cable FYI. As I said, the resolution may still probably be lower than on your computer monitor.
 
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