iPod: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition

Play iTunes and iPod Videos on Your TV

Movies on the iPod and computer screen are great, but watching them on a bigger screen is often even more gratifying. In case you were wondering, you can watch all those movies and videos on your big TV screen—you just need to connect your computer or iPod to the television. What you connect them with depends on the hardware involved.

If you're connecting the computer to the TV, here are your best options:

• Connect computers that have S-video connections using an S-video cable; that pipes through high-quality video. For the audio, a $10 Y-shaped cable with a stereo mini-plug on one end and the red and white RCA plugs on the other provide the sound.

• If you have a computer-friendly television (the kind that can double as a computer monitor thanks to VGA or DVI ports), you can just plug your laptop right into the TV.

To mate the iPod with the TV, your options depend on which generation iPod you have.

• Early video iPods, (the ones that came out before Apple dubbed the model the "Classic"). You can connect these iPods to the TV with a special cable like the Apple iPod AV Cable, available at http://store.apple.com and other places. This $19 cable has a stereo mini-plug on one end for the iPod's headphones jack, and red, white, and yellow RCA plugs on the other end for carrying the audio and video signal to the TV. Some similar camcorder cables may also work, as do third-party cables from Belkin and Monster Cable, or special iPod video docks from DLO and ...