Let’s talk home entertainment. Nowadays we’re dealing with an explosive growth when it comes to this particular subject, with solutions ranging from new home theaters with Blu-Ray technology, gaming consoles turned home theater with spectacular features, Steam introducing the new In-Home Streaming service, and many, many more others. Sure, new stuff will always be cool, but what about the old things we could use to entertain ourselves? I’m sure many of you have some old tech lying around and you don’t really know either to throw it away or keep for old time’s sake.
The premises
Say you have an old laptop or PC that you don’t really use all that much anymore and an old HiFi system. The thing about these HiFi systems is that they were made to withstand the test of time, believe it or not. Each one or at least the vast majority of them come with built-in auxiliary jacks.
The connections
So we’ve established that you have an old laptop or PC and a HiFi system. Now it’s time to connect them to each other and start getting entertained. The first thing you need to do is to look for those auxiliary jacks. They are represented by two jacks usually placed at the back of the HiFi system. They are a red one and a white (or sometimes black one). Find them? Good, then you’re ready to get audio from your computer into your system and out through the speakers for superior sound quality. Of course, you’re going to need a cable for this. The cable is very cheap (about a dollar) and it is called an RCA to 3.5mm jack cable. You can get it pretty much anywhere you can buy a cable. You don’t need to install any software for this to work, just plug the red jack of the cable into the red jack of the HiFi and the black one into the black one and then the 3.5mm to your computer’s audio output jack and turn on the HiFi in auxiliary mode and you’re ready to start a party!
Optional connections
You probably have a big screen TV too and love to watch your movies or TV shows from online streaming services like Netflix, but don’t have a Smart TV or you can’t be bothered to move your main PC closer to the TV. You can still use your laptop! Combined with your HiFi audio system, this is the best entertainment you can get from your old electronics for the price of one dollar! If you wish to connect your old laptop to your TV, first look for the VGA output on your laptop, it is a blue-background 15-pin connector that has 5 pins on each row and 3 rows. If you found it on your laptop, look for it on your TV. If it is there too, then you’re all set. You can buy a VGA to VGA connector for as cheap as a dollar at any cable store or, alternatively, you can take it from an old monitor that you might have lying around. Connect them and switch your laptop on, it should detect it automatically so that the image will be duplicated onto the screen of your TV.
So there you have it! Cheap home entertainment with old equipment. Enjoy the show!
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