The converter has connection ports on three sides and a bunch of controls on the other. It also came with three cables.

The cables are a composite RCA video cable, a USB-to-A/C adapter and a VGA patch cable. I left the video cable in its wrapper as the converter supports S-video, and I already had an S cable left over from the G4 setup. I originally connected the cables like this:

Keep in mind that none of the ports on the converter are labeled, and I didn’t know at the time that the VGA cable that runs from the laptop’s VGA-out port to the converter is supposed to be connected like this:

(Pro tip: read the manual!) Once I had the converter properly connected, I decided to restart the laptop, as I wasn’t getting any picture on the TV. After the restart, I saw the WinXP logo on the Toshiba.

This was good, as I knew now that the Netbook was communicating properly with the converter and in turn, the television. Unfortunately, once the laptop finished booting, my TV looked like this:

I consulted the manual (which, by the way, is not terribly comprehensive) and it said to ensure that, if you’re using a laptop, that it’s set to use the external display. I pulled up the EEE’s Display Properties, and after some trial-and-error, I discovered that I needed to make sure that the second display was selected in the drop-down menu, and that the check box next to “Extend Desktop across both displays” (or whatever it says, exactly) is selected. Once i did that (and clicked the Apply button), my TV looked like this:

(I tried checking the option that said something like “Make this my primary display,” but when I did that, my TV went black.) As I found out, my TV was displaying an “extended Desktop,” which made the laptop behave as though the TV was an extension of its built-in display, instead of just mirroring what was on the built-in display (which is what I had hoped it’d do). At this point, I launched a web browser, and by coincidence, it opened on the “TV side.” I navigated tu hulu and began streaming an episode of “Community:”

And while the low-quality nature of these photos doesn’t do it justice, the quality of the video was pretty good. And once the video was fully buffered, the stream was almost flawless. I should emphasize that this is a lo-fi solution for streaming video to a standard-definition TV. Not sure how well this’d work for an HD set. But it could be an option if the TV didn’t have a VGA-in port. This setup could also be used in conjunction with a projector, but since it doesn’t seem possible to get the converter connection to mirror the built-in display, that could be problematic for some presentations. I also noticed that, once the converter box was disconnected from the laptop, I had to go through the whole setup process again after reconnecting. A minor inconvenience, but something to consider. Overall, I’m pretty happy with this setup. Would even consider getting a second Netbook, just to have a dedicated computer for this purpose.