Powerpoint presentations on plasma TV

[Mike Ward]

I do Red Sea wreck trips and make Powerpoint presentations from a laptop, connecting to a plasma TV via S-video.

All works fine, but the laptop is big, bulky and heavy, not ideal for airline packing, and also belongs to SWMBO.

Can anybody suggest a more compact way of doing things? Would a Palm/pocket PC do the job? I have to be able to use s-video out as that's the way the plasma's are set up.

I also have an old laptop running Windows 98 that has a 15-pin out but no s-video, but is much smaller, lighter and infinitely more disposable than the laptop I'm using now. Anyone any idea if the 15 -pin to s-video adapters are any good? And if the old laptop would do the job if I got one?

Thankyou!

PS could I ask for any answers to be in language suitable for the technologically challenged, please?

[Sakara Drinker]

Will the plasma not take a computer monitor cable?

[lloydwatkin]

PowerPoint to DVD:convert PowerPoint to DVD,PowerPoint to Video,PowerPoint to MPEG

Lloyd

[SimonK]

Seen it done with an iPod, obviously you need to prepare the presentation on somthing else. Could always take a photo of the traditional white board and throw in a few photos from the web.

Simon

[StuartC]

Hmm, sure you can get a cable for a PDA to connect to S-Video with a bit of Googling.

My PDA is Windows Mobile and can run Powerpoint, so in theory this would be feasible, so long as

a) you can get a suitable cable
b) the powerpoint doesn't get stuffed up converting from PC to Windows Mobile version!

you might also want to look at some of the ultra mobile PCs coming onto the market, but I've not checked out their video out capabilities.

Have a look on here/give them a ring for advice:-

PDAs, Mobiles & Wireless Networking - eXpansys UK Limited

[Mike Ward]

Thanks, guys, very useful!

[MarkyBish]

Not exactly power point but these are all the rage at the moment

Media Player Housing

Convert your presentation to video and stills first mind

Mark.

[Smiling Dragon]

I've never heard of an S-Video out for a PDA but they could exist. The user port on your average PDA might not have the bandwidth to drive a screen directly but there may be a gizmo that does the work of keeping a screen up to date for you and takes a PDA feed - I can see it being very costly though.

Another option would be a simple picture viewer - you can get quite nice ones designed for dumping the images from a digital still camera or camcorder and burning them to CD or DVD. The good ones can then play these back in a slideshow controlled by a little IR remote. The whole thing is about the size of a walkman.
Something like this:

Using the software others have identified above you could make a series of stills or a DVD menu (so you can control the speed it changes images at).

Alternativly, you could look at one of the smaller laptops. If you don't need to play high-end games and run crazy graphics packages you could get a very low-spec one.

Sony have a couple of very small laptops, including one about two or three times the size of a PDA (not so cheap though). Other manufacturers do little laptops too but I've not seen one quite as small as sony's:

[Mike Ward]

Thanks again everyone.

Sakara: the plasmas are mounted to the wall of the saloon on each boat I use, I can get to the VGA socket on one but can't even see if the other 2 have them without taking the screen down, not an option I really fancy.