Accell UltraVideo external video adapter - DisplayLink DL-195

Having broken my DVD/blue-ray player and having a lot of movies and photos on my laptop and external hard drive I want a way to show these on my large HDTV.

The Accell UltraVideo external video adapter - DisplayLink DL-195 uses usb 2 technology now common on most laptops, and sends 1080p HD video and audio which is a clear and up-to-date standard.

It also supports wide screen and resolutions up to 1920x1200 or 2048x1152 (wide-screen) which shows unbelievable detail and clean movies and pictures, it must be said my laptop is a good standard and I believe this is a must to achieve best picture results.

Also being usb technology you need not worry about power as it runs on minimum power supplied through the usb which is not only green but useful and very portable.

The UltraVideo adaptor is light weight and handy hard drive size device at 27 x 20 x 6.4 cm ; 136 g providing useful portable abilities, for college or work, if you are are in the movie production industry or learning media at school or college this would allow you to port your work anywhere a HDTV was available.

Essentially the adaptor is Windows and Macintosh compatible allowing for general home use or professional use, knowing person's in the media industry use macintosh although they are more popular in the home now.

I'm not a mac owner but I know of people who would use this ho are and they would enjoy its uses as they have apple TV that runs through their mac and an external apple device.

Not only can you use this for media such as films and photos you can hook up a second monitor that will allow you to Mirror, extend or rotate your computer's desktop on a larger external screen.

I have only found one issue that was difficult to remedy, I have a wall mounted TV although the device it self and the serial connection were fine and a snug fit the lead to the usb wasn't quite long enough for my needs , I had to lean my laptop against the wall on a shelf and it was a tight fit which led to the power to the laptop being a stretch to.

All said it was a minor inconvenience, and with basic installation this makes for a good purchase you have the serial VGA port with to strengthener screws for stability on the main device to the back of the TV and then a lead with the usb to the laptop/mac end.

I bought mine for £82.99 from ebuyer having read up about it, I have experienced no faults and a very speedy viewing experience with no pauses or blips, like have said though this may be due to a powerful laptop that can cope with HD quality films.

One good aspect is you can use this to stream youtube or BBC iplayer for catch up programmes to your TV so you don’t have to watch the programmes on your laptop.

So I would recommend this to you apart from the price which could do to be £20 to £30 cheaper to make it a competitive purchase, but if you want to go from laptop to TV in one easy step with out having to doctor your pc or laptop with new cards I strongly recommend this adapter.

The installation takes minutes and its plug and play and pre installed software was easy to configure with an easy step by step set-up guide.

One thing to watch out for if you fancy buying one is the minimum specification of pc/laptop this requires no hard drive space and it only installs a driver so your laptop can communicate with it but you need a minim of 4gb of memory and a CPU that can handle HD TV which is a pentium 4 or higher but I personally believe this would pause and not run smoothly if you just used the minimum.

I find it use full just for the photos and streaming youtube an BBC iplayer to the TV, its also a good standby for a broken DVD player.

Recommended to you yes if you take care in your set-up an note the requirements.