How can I play movies through my computer and beam the picture to my TV?

To be able to do this, your graphics card must support what's known as 's-video out'. You can tell if yours does by looking at the connectors at the back of your computer - s-video out sockets are round and look a bit like PS/2 mouse connectors. Now you need the right kind of cables to connect the two devices. You can buy PC to TV cables from cable specialists such as Belkin for about £15 and use them to transmit a signal from your computer's graphics card to your TV's scart socket. Once you have the right cables in place you can employ TV Tool to tweak the quality and geometry of the picture. The software which came with your graphics card will probably be able to handle this task adequately, though TV Tool will give you much more control over the way you view movies on your TV so is worth getting to grips with.

Silent movies aren't much fun, are they? To transmit sound to your TV as well you will need an additional cable, this time to connect your sound card's 'line out' socket to the left and right 'audio input' connectors of your TV or video. Again, Belkin or a similar electronics/cable specialist retailer should stock these. What you need to look out for is a cable with a mini stereo phone plug at one end (see the plug attached to your computer speakers or Walkman for an example), and two RCA plugs at the other.