How to Use Your TV for Zoom Calls and Remote Learning
Because huddling around a laptop is no fun at all!
By now, you’ve likely spent a ton of time on Zoom/Teams calls for work, family gatherings, some time with friends, and school. Trying to gather a bunch of folks around a single laptop for dinner or a birthday party is challenging. Holding academic classes on a small screen is not ideal, especially with younger kids. We tried ballet class via video conferencing, with a laptop on a TV tray, and it was… sort of OK. I decided it was time to set up our TV for video conferencing and remote classwork. It’s easy to do, and it doesn’t have to cost very much. Here’s how.
Overview
Most TVs support HDMI inputs for video and audio signals. Recent computers can either directly output HDMI, or have video output that can be converted to it with inexpensive adapters. If you connect a laptop to the TV with HDMI, video from the computer will display on the TV, and the audio from the computer will play on the TV’s speakers.
If you have an older HD TV, it won’t be quite as sharp as a regular computer monitor. If you spend a ton of time doing word processing or reading email on it, it may cause eye fatigue — but it works great for teleconferencing. If your TV is 4k, it will likely look very good.
