 Cramming your friends around a monitor is one way to show off your digital photos and videos at home, but it’s not always convenient or comfortable, particularly if the PC resides in a bedroom or small home office. Conversely, plopping down on a comfy couch to view home-brewed media on a sprawling HDTV is not only more enjoyable, but it offers a typically crisper, brighter viewing experience. The following are several handy inputs HDTVs provide to bask in wedding, holiday, and other events documented in your photos and videos.
 The Ties That Bind
Own an HD camcorder? It probably has an HDMI output that will connect to an HDTV’s HDMI input via an HDMI cable. This connection displays home media at the best possible quality, as HDMI cables don’t compress the digital video and audio they transfer. This method also works with newer digital cameras that have an HDMI output.
If your device doesn’t have an HDMI output, Component, S-Video, and Composite connections are other possibilities for hooking it up to your HDTV, although you’ll experience some drop-off in image and audio quality from HDMI.
HDTVs with dedicated media USB ports, meanwhile, allow for attaching a USB thumb drive or external hard drive containing your audio, photos, and videos. Some of Samsung’s HDTVs (www.samsung.com), in fact, include a multimedia USB 2.0-based feature that supplies an interface to access and navigate media on connected USB devices via remote control.
Another USB-based option is an HD media player dock. This attaches to an HDTV via an HDMI or a Component input and provides an interface to access and navigate the photos, audio, videos, and movies a docked USB device contains with a remote control for viewing in up-to-HD quality complete with slideshow, audio, and other functions.
Other Options
An increasingly more common option that some HDTVs are including is a built-in memory card slot to view media. Just remove, say, an SD card from a digital camera, slip it in the HDTV’s slot, and you’re in business.
A less common option is DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), a software-based feature that enables some HDTVs to tap in to a home network and stream photos and videos from a PC. Although there are still few DLNA-certified products, that’s changing.
Finally, although more cumbersome, most HDTVs offer a PC input to directly connect a PC or laptop. Beyond displaying PC-stored media on the HDTV screen, this method essentially turns the HDTV into a glorified monitor screen.
Armed with the knowledge of the various methods that HDTVs include to view your home photos and videos on an HDTV screen, you can now match the outputs your digital camera or camcorder includes with the inputs that a prospective HDTV you’re considering buying includes. 
by Blaine Flamig
Connections For Viewing Media On HDTVs
• HDMI: offers the best audio and video quality but requires that devices have HDMI output
• USB: ultra-convenient and found on many devices
• Memory card slot: small form factor means quick and tidy transfers
• HD media player dock: versatile and user friendly
• PC: flexible but less convenient
• DLNA: home network-based method with a promising future |
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