ClimaxDigital (VGA TO AV) (VGA TO Video/SVIDEO) (PC/Notebook To TV) Converter

The first surprise with this item was the size of the unit itself. The box it comes in is quite large, but once you remove all the included leads you find the main unit isn't much bigger than a couple of packs of playing cards.

The box contains leads for every possible combination of input and output that the unit can handle which is very good. It's also powered from a USB port via the supplied cable removing the need for a heavy power adapter. This means the unit is very portable and with its leads will fit into the pocket of a laptop case without any problem.

The supplied manual is very brief, but functional. In use it the Converter was pretty much plug and play for me outputting my Samsung NC10 netbook to a Samsung 32" widescreen CRT TV. Connect the supplied VGA cable to the VGA out on your computer and to the VGA in on the Converter. Then choose the appropriate output for your TV and connect the cable. Finally, connect the USB power lead to a free port on the computer. After that just set your PC to output via VGA (usually one of the function keys on a laptop) and set the TV to the appropriate AV channel and there's your picture.

After a few tweaks of the settings on my netbook's graphics card I had a very acceptable picture on the TV. It was a bit blurry to be able to use for tasks like word processing, web surfing, etc, but for watching services like YouTube, BBC iPlayer, etc it was perfectly good - and that was the task I wanted this for.

The unit has some settings of its own if you want to play around with hue, brightness, sizing, etc. I tested with both AV out and S-Video and the picture was good. No more iPlayer on a 10" screen for me! For watching online streaming video this is a recommended product.

Requires no setting up, works immediately. Definition not as good as original VGA signal, but this is probably inevitable in translating from one system to another. A "no fuss" product that does the job.

I plugged the VGA cable into the VGA In socket on the Unit and the other end into the VGA port on my laptop. I plugged the Video Out cable into the Unit and the other end into my TV's Video socket. I also plugged the USB cable into the Unit and laptop. I changed my TV channel to one of the AV channels (AV 3), but nothing appeared on the TV.

I right-clicked my desktop and tried changing the display settings. Ticking the "Extend my Windows desktop onto this computer" resulted in just my desktop/wallpaper picture being displayed on the TV screen (nothing else was displayed, no desktop icons, mouse pointer, or programs etc). So I unticked that option and tried using the function keys on my keyboard.

On my laptop there's an F5 key that shows two squares: one black, one blue. To use the F5 key I pressed and held down the Function button (shown as Fn on my keyboard) then pressed the F5 key. Pressing the F5 key more than once cycled my latop's monitor display through 3 settings: 1st Press) display the screen on laptop only; 2nd Press) display the screen on TV only; 3rd Press) display the screen on both the laptop and the TV. Success!

The colour of the image on my TV is much richer, although depending on the quality of the original image, the TV image can be very slightly blurred, but most definitely acceptable for watching films. The PC to TV setup is not really suitable for working eg typing/reading the text on the internet/Microsoft Word etc unless you significantly increase the zoom display within these programs (imagine trying to read slightly blurred font size 12 text on a sheet of paper 12 feet away).

The unit itself is very small (around the size of a basic mobile `phone) and the menu functions (brightness, size etc) are nice and simple to navigate and change. The unit's cables are long and enable me to position the laptop just over 12 feet away from the TV. The unit relays a video signal to the TV, but not audio, so you have to rely on your PC's speakers for sound (or look into getting additional/other units/cables that can relay the sound to your TV). I found the user manual unhelpful with trouble-shooting the display problem (the action I took above with the function keys wasn't mentioned). I'm no technical expert and got help by Google-ing the problem. I considered taking a point off my review score for that. If it wasn't for the help I found on the internet, I would have returned the product to the seller because it wouldn't have worked for me. Now that it's working, I'm happy with its quality.

Tip 1: if you can't see a DVD film that's playing through Windows Media Player on your TV, try cycling through the F5 function settings mentioned above until it gets to the "display the screen on TV only".

Tip 2: if you can't see a non-DVD file that's playing through Windows Media Player on your TV, try unticking the "Use Overlays" option under Tools, Options, Performance, Advanced, in Windows Media Player.

Tip 3: any other problems, try Google-ing to find the solution (like I did) before returning the unit as "not working". You shouldn't have to go through all that, especially if the user manual's trouble-shooting guide was more extensive, but it might save you returning a product that will actually work for you, with a tweak here and there. (Lucky you if it works straight out of the box!)