It’s the Holiday season, and that means a lot of time catching up with relatives on the phone or in person. You can make those long-distance calls a lot more personal though, by setting up your living room TV to act as a video phone.

And really, setting up a video chat session on your living room PC isn’t all that hard. We’ll show you how you can get started video chatting with just three simple steps: Finding the right connector, setting up a webcam, and installing video chat software.

We’ll warn you ahead of time: this guide is written to be a little more newbie-friendly then our usual how-tos here at MaximumPC. Now, we’re not forgetting our power-user fans, but we wanted to make this guide something you can send to your parents and other relatives, so that they can get in touch for the holidays.

Read on for all the details.

Connecting your laptop to your TV

The trickiest part of the process can actually be connecting your laptop to your TV, which can require one of several different cables and adaptors, depending on your TV and laptop hardware. To find out what connectors you need, start by looking at the back of your TV. Look for the following connectors, in this order, and keep track of which ones your TV has:

HDMI

Well good for you, you’ve got an HDMI port, which has the most bandwidth of any standard plug and is found on the newest TVs.

DVI

The DVI port is another common port on laptops and televisions, easily distinguished from the older VGA port by its longer appearance and the slot on the right side.

VGA

A VGA port is an older, analog connector. It’s very common on older laptops and computers.

S-Video

Also common on older laptops, S-Video is another analog video connector.

Composite Cable

Usually seen as part of a red-yellow-white RCA cable triplet, the yellow connector is for composite video.

Now check your laptop for all the same connectors, making note of which ones it has. There are several possible outcomes:

If your TV and laptop share a connector:

You’re in luck! If both your laptop and your TV have the same connector, you just need a cable of that type. If both have an HDMI port, you just need an HDMI cable to connect the two.

If your TV has an HDMI port and your laptop has a DVI port, or vice versa:

You need a DVI cable and a DVI-to-HDMI converter.

If your TV has a VGA port and your laptop has a DVI-I port:

You need a VGA cable and a DVI-to-VGA adaptor. Note that a DVI-I port has a solid block of pin holes. If your DVI port has two square groups of pin holes, it cannot be converted to VGA.

If your TV has a composite port and your computer has an S-Video port:

You need a composite cable and an S-video-to-composite adaptor

Any other combination of ports:

Unfortunately, you're probably out of luck. Although converters do exist for these other combonation, inherent differences in the kind of signal being sent mean that it's going to look bad or not work at all if you try to use one. Fancier converter boxes exist that can make the necessary corrections, but they tend to be expensive.

Once you’ve connected your computer to your TV, you’ll more than likely need to adjust your resolution.
In Windows XP: Right-click on the desktop, and select Properties from the dropdown menu. Choose the Settings tab on the right, then click on the monitor marked 2. Bump the Screen resolution slider as far as it’ll go to the right, and make sure that the Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor checkbox is checked.

In Windows 7: Right-click on the desktop and select Screen resolution. Select the box marked 2 and set the resolution as high as it’ll go. Click on Connect to a projector and select the Extend setting.

Installing a Webcam

Next, you’ll need a webcam. A lot of laptops come with a built-in webcam these days, which will work in a pinch, but for the full television-video phone experience, you’ll need a peripheral webcam, which you can position on top of or directly below your TV screen, which creates the illusion of having a face-to-face conversation, instead of a face-to-side-of-head one.

We strongly recommend the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema Web camera. It’s the first to record 720p video at 30 frames per second (in other words, a crisp, smooth video) and it’s available for a very reasonable $40-50 right now. Also, the flexible stand is great for attaching the camera to the top of a flatpanel TV.

 

 

Actually installing a Webcam is generally easy. You just run whatever software it comes with, and plug it in.

Setting up the Video chat

There are plenty of video chat clients available on the internet, but after some quality comparisons, and keeping ease of use in mind, we’ve selected Gtalk from Google as our recommended video chat service.

Gtalk is the built-in chat client in Gmail. If you have already Google account, from signing up for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader or any other number of Google web services, then you’re already all set. If you don’t, you’ll need to go here and fill out the brief form to set up an account.

Next, you’ll need to download the Gtalk video plugin. This is as easy as going to this page, clicking Install voice and video chat, and then following the instructions on the installer that pops up. If you’re running Internet Explorer, you might need to click on the bar that appears at the top of the screen when your browser restarts, which asks you for permission to run the plugin.

Once both you and the person you want to video chat with have accounts, both of you need to go to Gmail and log-in. You’ll see a box in the left-hand side of the screen marked Chat. Enter the Gmail address of the person you want to video chat with into the Search, add, or invite field, and click Invite to chat.

 

Once the other person accepts, a chat window will open up in the bottom-right corner of the screen. At the bottom of this chat window it says Video & More with an arrow. Click on this button, then select Start video chat from the menu.

A video should appear, showing the person you're talking to, and yourself.

You can click on the arrow icon in the top right of the video window to pop it out from the page. Drag the popped out window over to your TV screen. Then, hover your mouse over the video screen until you see a full-screen icon (which looks like two rectangles) appear. Click it, and the person you're chatting too should take up the whole TV.

And that's it, enjoy your chat!