Watch digital photos on TV

Introduction

Wanna display your digital photos on the living room TV instead of your computer? This article outlines methods to suit your need to watch digital photos on TV, whatever showcase your photography or share your precious memories with friends and family.

What you'll need

1. Digital Photos 2. DVD Burner 3. DVD Disc 4. Necessary Devices 5. TV

Steps

Option 1: Using Digital Camera

Nowadays, the Digital Camera is powerful enough to directly show your digital photos on TV. As a prerequisite, you can connect your digital camera to TV. Most, if not all digital cameras come with a video-out port. Simply connect one end of the cable to the video-out of the digital camera and the other end to the video-in of the TV. Then, play back the photos on the camera and they will display simultaneously on the TV. The advantage of this method is very convenient. But you can only view the photo in your camera and the memory of camera limits the photo numbers. If the memory of camera is small, you could only play very few photos.

Option 2: Using Photo Viewing Device

Another approach is to use a photo viewing device. With regard to this kind of device, there is also a video-out port to connect the device to the TV (like digital camera to TV). In summary, this approach is similar to using a digital version of a 35mm slide projector. You can refer to the SanDisk Photo Viewer.

Technical Details of SanDisk Photo Viewer

• View and share digital photos with family and friends on the TV
• Compatible with all popular digital camera media formats, including CompactFlash Type I and II, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, SD, and MultiMediaCard
• View multiple pictures in preview mode, delete, rotate and zoom with remote control
• Supports JPEG files (the most common form of file format used by digital still cameras) at resolutions up to 6 megapixels
• Small and compact (about the size of a mini VCR)

Option 3: Using DVD Player

Some DVD players in the market which accept memory cards as input. Sampo DVE-631CF is one of these I know of. It accepts JPEG photos from CompactFlash cards besides general DVD disc.

Technical Details of Sampo DVE-631CF

• Built-in CompactFlash card slot lets you view JPEG photos on your TV or monitor
• Play MP3 files from CD-R, CD-RW, and CF cards
• High-quality component-video output (for use with compatible TV)

Up to now, all the above options have one obvious drawback, you're limited by the amount of memory available on your memory card. Moreover, you may delete or clear photos on memory by mistake. Lastly, Transition effects are also limited.

Option 4: Using DVD Burner

Following are benefits of Photos DVD

• Large capacity: about 2 hours of photos DVD and 1000 high quality digital photos (4.7G single-layer DVD).
• Long time preservation: Most important is that the quality of photos and photos DVD would not degrade over times and after thousands of playback.
• Easy navigation: Photos could be combined into one photos DVD disc. However, with the help of DVD menu, you could locate a specific category, like Travel, Family or work, quickly and conveniently. Enjoy photos on TV with DVD is prevalent.
• Easy to share: This is the ultra-compact way to share your photos DVD with friends and family. After you have burned your photos DVD with photo to DVD software, deliver your DVD disc and you share it with the world.

The best approach of all, in my opinion, is to convert your digital photos to DVD format. The DVD you created can then be played back in any DVD player to display all your pictures as a slideshow. The chief advantage of this approach over the others is that you can store many, many photos on a 4GB or even 8GB DVD-R. It's also pretty convenient to send a DVD of pictures (instead of a memory card) to your friends or family members who live faraway.

All you need is a DVD burner and DVD Slideshow making software. The best slideshow making software I've found for doing this is Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder.

With its polished and wizard-style interface, this software allows you to convert all your digital photos to DVD in a few clicks. What should mentioned is that you can select favorite transition effects (2D and 3D Effects) to your photos, and most important, you can author photo DVD menus for easy navigation. This is very useful if you are presenting a large amount of digital photos. Visit its homepage for more information and step-by-step guides.

Finally burn your slideshow onto DVD directly and play photo DVD with standard DVD player.

Alternate methods

1. Digital Photo Frame 2. Photo Viewer

Suggested readings

My Blog: http://dvd-photo-slideshow.blogspot.com