How to connect Laptop to TV wirelessly or wired
How to connect Laptop to TV wirelessly. Smart TV is very useful must have device nowadays. Using Smart TV you can watch TV shows, episode, movies, can cast apps from your mobile to TV.
One more benefit of using Smart TV is that you can also connect your Laptop to TV for presentations in office, to watch movies and photos easily from Laptop to TV.
For some works you can also use TV as a monitor to view laptop screen on big screen of TV e.g long spread files (excel files), auto cad files etc.
The simplest way to connect laptop to TV is using HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) cable (Wired method). We will discuss first all the options of wired connection thereafter will see how to connect Laptop to TV wirelessly.
Table of Contents
How to connect Laptop to TV using HDMI cable
Many laptops are having HDMI port with them, to connect to TV you need a male to male HDMI cable.
Just plug one end of HDMI cable at laptop and other end on the TV’s any of the HDMI port.
On the TV from remote select the correct input as per HDMI port, and in laptop press Win+P key combination to connect TV as projector. When you press Win+P key you will see different options to connect projector, let us see what the meaning of these options.
Duplicate: This means your laptop and projector screen will be duplicated. If your TV and laptop are having different resolution than in that case both the device will work on the same resolution. The resolution will be decided by the lower resolution device it can be your laptop or TV.
Extended : This means TV will act as extension of laptop screen, you can open one window in laptop and same time different window or application on TV. For, example you can work on word document in laptop and can watch YouTube on TV.
Second screen only: This means your laptop screen will turn off and display will run on TV or projector only. In this mode TV display will work with its highest resolution provided that your laptop’s graphics card supported that resolution.
PC screen only: The Projector will be disconnected.
In the display settings of Laptop, you can also change the resolution and other settings.
If your laptop not having HDMI port, you have to check the display port type and buy a cable accordingly. For example, many laptops are now come with mini HDMI port, mini display port, and Type – C port for external display.
You will need these cables as per requirement of your laptop:
Image Credit – Amazon.in
For Thunderbolt Type C port many adapters are available by which you can convert Type C to HDMI, Ethernet, Type-A USB etc.
You can also connect your desktop to TV using HDMI cable.
Check ports on the backside of your desktop, if you are only having VGA port than you can install graphics card into CPU that is having HDMI, DVI ports. Modern Graphics card also supports audio using DVI to HDMI cable.
If you have DVI port only than you can use a DVI to HDMI cable for video and for audio will have to connect aux cable from Desktop PC audio out port to aux input of TV.
Check all the ports behind TV for these options. You can use wireless mouse and keyboard to control your laptop from some distance for easy work.
Wireless options to connect laptop to TV
Suppose you do not want to sit nearby to TV and many situations, where wireless connection is more suited. In an office where you do not want to carry a cable for presentation every time in your bag. Further during presentations, you may want to sit at some distance.
On home also you may be sittings on your desk and want to play some movie or content. Then you need to connect Laptop to TV wirelessly.
Before jump to how to connect Laptop to TV wirelessly the wireless solutions lets have a look on different terms used for wireless connections.
Screen Cast vs Screen Mirror (Projecting)
Casting or media streaming is sending media to smart TV or media receiver in compressed format. Media receiver decompress the file and play that to screen on real time.
Many smart TV having this feature, if your TV and Laptop are on same Wi-Fi network, means connected with same access point, you can cast any media file from your laptop to TV.
Screen mirroring or screen projecting means your laptop or mobile screen is replicating or mirroring on the TV on real time. Whatever you seen on your laptop screen same can be seen on the TV.
Screen mirroring requires Miracast feature or some streaming devices like Chromecast to replicate laptop screen on TV.
Chromecast Vs Miracast Vs Anycast
Miracast is a standard first introduced by Intel to mirror the laptop or mobile screen on the smart TV. Later, after released of Google Chromecast, Google has revoked this feature from Android mobiles and Android smart TV to promote their Google Chromecast.
However many OEM mobile manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei, still providing this feature to their Smartphones by preparing customise android OS.
Miracsat can be worked with the same Wi-Fi network or even works with Wi-Fi direct protocol that doesn’t need internet or Wi-Fi router. Using Miracast feature you can screen mirror the laptop to TV as like projector.
Chromecast is a device or dongle released by Google, using Chromecast you can cast apps from android or iOS mobile to TV. Chromecast can be plugged into the HDMI port of TV.
To Run Chromecast, you need a working internet connection always. Two things are possible through Chromecast.
One is casting of apps, when you tap over the cast button the link of media e.g. Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hotstar, Zee5, YouTube content etc. same shall be picked up by Chromecast from Wi-Fi network and the device directly fetch the content from network, there is no role of your mobile in between.
However, you can control the media like volume, play / pause, forward / reverse, start / stop etc.
Both of Miracast and Chromecast may not work on Macbook or some iOS devices. For that you can use Anycast that is dongle as like Chromecast that works on Windows, Android and iOS platforms.
How to connect laptop to TV wirelessly
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Using Windows 10 Wireless Display option to Miracast enabled TVs
You can connect Laptop to TV wirelessly using wireless display feature of window 10 laptop. Click on connect in the settings and search for your TV. When TV name shown connect, you should enable input as screen mirror in TV using remote.
When prompted on TV some device wants to establish a connection allow using TV remote.
This wireless display requires Wi-Fi router and both the devices needs to be connected on the same Wi-Fi access point.
You can also connect to TV using Wi-Fi direct settings. In the TV search for Wi-Fi direct, enable this Wi-Fi SSID or access point, check the SSID name and password. Connect using laptop this wireless network. Now you can connect to wireless display as mentioned above.
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Using Miracast enabled dongles
If your TV not supporting Miracast or not a smart TV than you can use Miracast enabled dongle. These, dongle receive data as wireless media receiver and project the display to TV. Some of the examples are Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter.
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Using Cast feature of Windows 10
If your smart TV and Windows machine is on the same Wi-Fi or wired network, you can cast media files to TV screen by right click on the file and select cast. To work this feature network discovery and file sharing should be turned on in your PC.
The limitation of this feature is that you can cast limited file types to the smart TV e.g. MP4, WMV, AVI, MOV for video and MP3, WMA, WAV for audio.
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Using Streaming devices
If you have Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Fire Stick, Xbox etc. you can mirror your laptop screen to TV using these devices. If you found some issue you can also take help of some third party solutions like allcast.
For MacBook and iOS devices you can use apple TV that uses Airplay feature to cast laptop screen on TV.
For the details about these streaming devices you can also check our previous post.
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Using Chromecast
Chromecast is the one of the cheapest solutions for screen mirroring. If you have Chromecast you can also connect laptop to TV wirelessly, but you also need chrome browser installed in your laptop.
For the detailed procedure on how to connect laptop to TV wirelessly using Chromecast, see our previous post.
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Using DLNA media server:
If your smart TV is supported to DLNA (Digital Living Networking Alliance) multimedia standard. You can cast the media files directly to TV by right click on the media file and cast icon.
By using this function your PC become a digital media server and TV become as digital media receiver and played the file on the smart TV. For this feature to work the media files you want to cast should be compatible to the TV’s playing list of media file type.
Further inside your TV input settings, you may found media server to directly play files from TV those are stored on you laptop or desktop.
Other alternative options
Many TV supports media files using USB ports. If your TV having USB ports you can play movies, and media files. The only drawback of this feature is that not the all files are supported to play by TV. For example VLC player can play all the file format e.g. MKV, MOV, MP4, AVI, FLV.
You may need to convert the files first using video converter software to play using USB drive in TV.
On the USB ports you can also plug the full hard disk, most of Smart TV also supports to recognise a full fledged HDD.
Wrap Up
We have in this post various options on How to connect Laptop to TV wirelessly, although using Miracast you can screen mirror your laptop screen on TV, but there are lot of latency in this method.
However we have not not checked Microsoft Miracast Dongle, may be it has better connectivity compared to Smart TV inbuilt Miracast feature.
The best option to connect laptop to TV are wired one like using HDMI cable, others are using streaming devices like Chromecast etc.
References
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-connect-your-laptop-to-your-tv-wirelessly-or-with-hdmi/
https://www.techradar.com/in/how-to/television/how-do-i-connect-my-laptop-to-my-tv-902693