Dell M2300 HDMI ???

I recently bought a used Dell M2300 with:

T7500 2.2 ghz
4 GB Ram (using 3.5GB only cause of XP x86)
NVIDIA Quadro FX 360M 256MB TurboCach

For weeks I been trying to find ways to hook with up to the TV, the only way was with VGA. My TV didn't have a VGA input. So I was debating about buying a VGA -to- HDMI converter box or even buying the Dell D-port PD01X (the big one) and installing a PCI with HDMI output. And if you are wondering, I don't think there is regular PCI card with HDMI, only PCI-E cards have HDMI I think. Also it would be quite expensive buying old discontinued parts.


After all that research on parts, I was able to hook it up to my 42" HDTV Plasma using a Dell D-Port PR01X (the small one) by plugging a DVI-to-HDMI cable. Now the quality of the desktop and other applications looked half decent. But when I load up a couple of movies at full screen using VLC, they looked amazing! I am talking about x264 DVDrips and 720p and 1080p BDrips. Even some youtube videos looked amazing. No lags at all. But Divx DVDrips looked like actual DVD quality without up-conversion. Also there is no sound from the DVI -to- HDMI connection, but thats no big deal since I was able to plug in some better speakers into the laptop.

If you are wondering about how it looked with S-Video, it looks horrible. Also the Dell D630 is very similar to the Dell M2300, so I am pretty sure you will receive the same results as well.

If you have any other older D-series laptops it should work pretty well too if you have the D-Port Docking System. It works even with my very old Dell 600m (Centrino 745 1.86 ghz, 1GB ram, nVidia 32MB). It may not look as good as the Dell M2300, but good enough to watch and not complain about the quality.

Feel free to ask me questions or clear anything up.