I am looking into buying a new monitor (specifically, this one). I am connecting it to an old computer (8 years old), that only has VGA output. I can connect it to the monitor as it is right now, but that's not good enough. I want to use the monitor's max resolution (1,920 x 1,080).
Here's my question: How can I watch HD videos on this monitor? should I buy a new video card? an external video card? a media streamer? What are my options here?
Thank you in advance.
An 8-year old computer should manage 2 Mpx just fine for normal display operations (but since you don't give any specs it's impossible to be sure). However decompressing and playing HD video requires quite a bit of computing power, likely more than you have. It's a matter of CPU, graphics card, and perhaps motherboard components as well, so there may not be a single component you can just upgrade. You'll probably have to buy a special-purpose device, an HTPC (a special-purpose computer that can also serve as a general-purpose computer), or a new desktop or laptop computer.
The easiest (and imho best) solution would be to simply buy a Sumvision MKV enclosure and cut out the computer completely.
It is capable of FULL 1080p HD, can play almost all/any format available and works very well.
Even if you manage to find a good AGP graphics card, the machine itself will most likely struggle in other areas being so old.
