How I Turned A Netbook into a Media Player for Less Than $60
A couple months ago I explained how I installed Ubuntu on my Acer Aspire One, unfortunately following that post the screen got damaged so I hadn’t been using the system. Recently I was talking with a co-worker who wanted to use watch MLB.com on his television to catch his hometown team when they were not broadcast locally; this gave the broken Aspire a new breath of life as a media player.
While this wasn’t a terribly complicated project I found it was a good way to take re-use the laptop with a broken monitor in a constructive way.
First, thing you need is a television that can accept VGA inputs. While this may seem to be pretty straight forward, when I bought my living room television I wasn’t considering this option and as such it doesn’t have the required input. If you have a television with a VGA input you it should also have an audio input for the laptop output.
Once you have a television with the appropriate input all you need is a VGA cable and an appropriate audio cable (usually mini plug to mini plug but could be mini plug to RCA). Since I also wanted to be able to control the computer from across the room I added a wireless keyboard and mouse, but before doing so I was controlling it from another laptop using the built in remote desktop functions (Vino).
Once connected to the television I can use the laptop as a media player for almost any media I would like, or on-line content like Youtube or Hulu.
Bill of Material:
| Broken Laptop | $0 (already owned) |
| LCD Television | $0 (already owned) |
| Mini plug – Mini plug Extension | $3.00 |
| VGA Cable | $8.00 |
| Wireless Keyboard and Mouse | $36.00 |
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