I bought a new laptop a month ago (cheap), but it did not include an HDMI port, only a typical VGA one. With March Madness coming up, plus NCAA football/basketball on ESPN360, I wanted to cancel these packages on DirecTV and be able to play the online content through my lone remaining spare HDMI input on my 47" LCD. Also, my laptop's maximum resolution is only 1366x768, so I could only imagine how screwed up it would look if I did use typical VGA converters/scalers. Most VGA-to-HDMI solutions I saw were well over $200, not necessarily small in form factor, and required a large AC adapter. All "forget about its" for me. And buying an Asus or other streaming device for my living room was not an option. I wanted something simple to occasionally augment the usefulness of my laptop and save me some money at DirecTV.
Enter the newly-released Atlona AT-HDVIEW. It comes with the unit with attached VGA, audio, and USB cables, along with a 6' HDMI cable. I hooked all the cables into their respective ports--audio and VGA on the laptop, HDMI on the TV--and then plugged in the USB cable into a port on the laptop. The device adjusted the laptop screen resoltuion automatically and then (most importantly), scaled it to 1080p resolution on my TV, as indicated in green text in the upper right corner of the screen a few seconds after I hooked everything together.
I've watched YouTube, ESPN360, plus other streaming content, and everything looks great. Naturally, the quality you see will depend a lot on the quality of the source video, but live-action streaming content is very good. The key to the value of this device (which I got for $85 from Tigerdirect with 15% Bing Cashback) is the scaler unit, size, and portability. Scaling works very well, and there are no large AC power bricks to lug around.
For $85 to $110, this is very useful device at a great value. Atlona AT-HDVIEW VGA to HDMI Scaler/Converter (USB Powered)
As most other reviewers were basically happy, I bought one myself. I wanted to run the PC, Blu-Ray and standard DVD over a single HDMI cable, plus this adapter integrates audio too.
Unfortunately, I have an old graphics card Nvidia TI, on the PC in question (the surf the net from the lazy boy machine) and the timings are apparently a little whacked out for this device. After playing with it for two days, I decided to use a DVI to HDMI cable for the PC instead. Unfortunately, this leaves the audio in limbo.
Now, the converter would work in manual mode 1080p; however, it was not completely stable, and would often give me an 'input not supported', when the input was obviously a listed as OK video mode (confirmed by logging in with VNC from another PC).
Atlona's web site was totally worthless in any type of technical or troubleshooting documentation or advice.
My advice is if your PC is fairly modern, go for it, otherwise, you might have issues like I had.
This is a perfect device for my laptop and my business trips. The only complaint I have is that it cuts off a border of the picture, but I might just have to call the company and find out if there is a setting for it.
The product arrived very quickly and just in time to set up my PC as a way to have a home entertainment center upgraded to include HD quality viewing of internet content. Looking at the previous reviews from other customers, there's a few that gave negative marks due to not finding the right setting or seeing a picture that was chopped, etc.. I first opened the package and hooked it up to a desktop PC with Windows vista OS. I've kept up with all the updates from Microsoft and have great virus protection so the PC runs well even though in PC years its 'old' (I've had this same desktop for 2.5 years) Assuming I would be able to get picture right away, I was worried at first since no picture came up and the "no support" message showed on the tv. I have an XBR6 Sony 40 inch with motion flow and 120HZ..yadayada..a great HDTV!! Long story short, I switched the setting on the device for manual which enables you to push a button and scroll through the different resolution settings to "pair" up the device to what your PC has a resolution and as designed upscale it to the HDTV. I had to change the "display settings" on my PC and push the button on the device to find the right 'output' that showed the screen. Eventually (10 minutes) of using various settings on the PC and pushing the "manual timing" button, I used 1024x768 input to 1366x768.
Great product but for those without the patience to find the right settings, could be cumbersome. Works as advertised for me!!
On receiving the Atlona, I plugged it into my laptop and into the HDMI port on my TV, allowing it to select input and output resolutions automatically. The result was OK, but not perfect. The image on the TV chopped off some of what appeared on my laptop screen. I'm not sure if this is "overscan" or "underscan", but I wanted it to look better. I switched to manual modes on the Atlona and discovered that all the input resolutions it claimed to support were not actually supported. Regardless, simply switching the input resolution did not fix the over/under scan problem anyway. The user manual contains a cryptic reference to fixing this by changing the TV's settings but it didn't offer any specific guidance, only noting that "all TVs are different". After fiddling with the TV (a Sharp Aquos 52 inch LCD) and studying the manual for awhile, I discovered that when an input is configured for a PC, you have the option of displaying the video "bit by bit". When I chose that option, the result was perfect, and it actually supported a sufficiently high resolution to get a good quality picture. I was able to stream episodes of "The Event" I forgot to record on my DVR onto my TV with good results.
I'm happy with the unit.'
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