Can I hook a console to a pc?

[Sanderguy777]

I'm looking to buy an xbox 1 s or ps4 slim on black Friday.  I want it for the bluray player and the games are secondary.  

What I need the answer to is: can I hook the console to a laptop to use the laptop screen? My family doesn't have a living room with a TV, so I want the whole thing to be portable. 

 

Thank you guys. I am leaning towards the xbox, but one or the other may not work with this setup, so I'm still open to each. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

You would need a capture card for that, and there may be issues with hdcp and latency.

 

Id just get a external usb bluray player if thats what you want.

[TAHIRMIA]

Not possible, the HDMI port on your laptop will be an output port not an input, so it won't work at all.

[Sanderguy777]

2 hours ago, TAHIRMIA said:

Not possible, the HDMI port on your laptop will be an output port not an input, so it won't work at all.

What about my thunderbolt 3 usb-c port? I have a conversation that makes it into an hdmi... would that work? 

 

I understand that the bluray player is easier, but for 100 bucks I can also play videos games....

[Stefan Payne]

16 hours ago, Sanderguy777 said:

I'm looking to buy an xbox 1 s or ps4 slim on black Friday.  I want it for the bluray player and the games are secondary.  

Sorry, but get a Bluray Player.

Both Consoles suck as a Media Player, the integrated one in my 239€ 32" ALDI TV is better than either one of those.

 

And the power consumption for both suck as well in this regard.

The BD Players PSU are rated for like 25-30W maximum. I don't really know how much the Standard/Slim Consoles consume as I don't own them. But the Premium are between 60 and 80W idle/Menu...

 

Consoles these days are primarily a device to play games on.

If you want a device that primarily does not play games, get that device. Especially as they come with remote control and should support HDMI CEC as well (so don't need the Remote Control)...

 

As for the Consoles:
PS4 supports HDMI CEC -> can use the TV Remote to play stuff

XBox does not.

 

Anyway:
DON'T BUY CONSOLES AS A MEDIA PLAYER!

They suck at that

 

16 hours ago, Sanderguy777 said:

What I need the answer to is: can I hook the console to a laptop to use the laptop screen? My family doesn't have a living room with a TV, so I want the whole thing to be portable. 

You need a HDMI Input device but they are darn expensive.

So no, not really. Its not what you want or a good solution for you.

 

What you seem to want is this:
https://geizhals.de/verbatim-external-slimline-blu-ray-writer-43890-a1476177.html

 

+ PowerDVD or whatever you need to play Bluray.

 

16 hours ago, Sanderguy777 said:

Thank you guys. I am leaning towards the xbox, but one or the other may not work with this setup, so I'm still open to each. 

Both are not the thing you want. So you should buy neither as you will be disapointed and very unhappy with wasting the money.

 

Especially with the XBox as you don't have much games to play on it and the Hardware of the Standard console is the worst on the one S...

[Sanderguy777]

Ok thank you. 

[Kawaii Koneko]

On 11/16/2018 at 5:15 AM, Stefan Payne said:

Sorry, but get a Bluray Player.

Both Consoles suck as a Media Player, the integrated one in my 239€ 32" ALDI TV is better than either one of those.

 

And the power consumption for both suck as well in this regard.

The BD Players PSU are rated for like 25-30W maximum. I don't really know how much the Standard/Slim Consoles consume as I don't own them. But the Premium are between 60 and 80W idle/Menu...

 

Consoles these days are primarily a device to play games on.

If you want a device that primarily does not play games, get that device. Especially as they come with remote control and should support HDMI CEC as well (so don't need the Remote Control)...

 

As for the Consoles:
PS4 supports HDMI CEC -> can use the TV Remote to play stuff

XBox does not.

 

Anyway:
DON'T BUY CONSOLES AS A MEDIA PLAYER!

They suck at that

 

You need a HDMI Input device but they are darn expensive.

So no, not really. Its not what you want or a good solution for you.

 

What you seem to want is this:
https://geizhals.de/verbatim-external-slimline-blu-ray-writer-43890-a1476177.html

 

+ PowerDVD or whatever you need to play Bluray.

 

Both are not the thing you want. So you should buy neither as you will be disapointed and very unhappy with wasting the money.

 

Especially with the XBox as you don't have much games to play on it and the Hardware of the Standard console is the worst on the one S...

I disagree that consoles make bad media devices. They may not have the app lineup of a dedicated streaming device or the flexibility of an HTPC but they have come a long way. I've done minimal media playback with my PS4 so I can't speak too much for it but the XBox, particularly the X is fairly robust. The X can pass through and control your TV, it has a 4k Blu-ray drive, has the Kinect for voice control, has a fair lineup of apps, and of course, has a massive game library.

 

Now of course, it isn't perfect. The lack of 4k passthrough for television is quite disappointing and there is an ever so slight quality degradation from what I hear (I haven't done any personal comparisons), sure the Blu-ray picture quality can't quite compare to a similarly priced dedicated unit but it is still pretty damn good, the One does have a more limited suite of streaming apps than a Roku or something similar but it does support the major players and even Kodi which allows you to mostly replicate an HTPC experience. No, it doesn't have a ton of current gen exclusives but it does play a great number of 360 games and current gen games generally speaking perform and look best on the X, in terms of the two consoles.

 

For a gaming console first, the X still makes a pretty good streaming device. I would probably not recommend it as a dedicated media device if you don't game but if you are primarily a multiplat console gamer and want 4k Blu-ray playback with pretty good streaming options, the X is not a bad route at all.

 

I don't think many people even care about power consumption either. Unless they are on a really tight budget or an environmentalist, I doubt many people care. 

 

But I do agree that a console probably isn't what the OP wants unless they really want to do some gaming. If they really do insist on getting a console and using their laptop as a screen, Remote Play or whatever MS calls it is really the only logical way to go. Both the PS4 and XBox One will stream to Windows 10. The PS4 will also stream to Android, I'm not 100% about the One. This is not ideal but for the right games that aren't competitive, it's not bad. I've streamed both my PS4 and One to my laptop. Hell, I even used Remote Play to play a good third of my second playthrough of The Last of Us over the internet on my Vita and it worked surprisingly well. Playing on a home network should yield even better results.