Using a laptop as the display for OSD

Has anyone used a laptop as the display for your 990. I want to set mine up in my other home but I don't have a display for it. My laptop has a s-video input which I should be able to use as the OSD but I don't know how to tell the laptop the 990 is an input.

Does your laptop have an s-video input or an s-video output? In most cases, the laptops I've seen with s-video connections have had outputs (so you could plug into a TV to get a big cheap display).

Yeah I think you are right. Its an output. Wasn't there some thread that discussed using some of the digital picture frames as a display. I remember thinking it was darn clever.

Yeah. The problem with those was that they generally didn't have a video input of any sort.

I have a display in my stereo setup that I got for a big discount. It was built as an iPod dock with built-in speakers and display, but shortly after they released it there was a new generation of iPods released that didn't work with it. They ended up getting sold through places like Woot for cheap (like $30 or so) because folks were using the video line input with them. I've seen similar small LCD displays lately at discounts for $70 or so.

Some older camcorders had composite video inputs. If you have any laying around, check them and see. The cam's LCD viewfinder might work OK for just setting the 990 up.

You can buy a cheap USB video "capture" unit online. That could allow your laptop to be used as a monitor for the 990's OSD. I did this when I first got my 990 and then moved. For a couple of days, I had no display so I used my laptop to configure the system (and listen to my CD collection) until the rest of my gear showed up.

I can't seem to find the unit this second, but it was something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6-023-_-Product

Best,