Learn Digital Photography .. Tune in to Your Photos on TV

Have you ever wanted to display your treasured digital photo collection in the living room TV instead of your computer?

It certainly makes sense to do this if you're showing off your pictures to many friends or family members. You wouldn't want your guests to crowd around that crummy computer screen would you?

Well, there are many ways to display photos on TV. Let's step through the various options in this article.

The most basic way to display digital photos on TV is through your digital camera. Most models, if not all come equipped with a video-out cable. All you do is connect one end of the cable to the video-out plug of the camera and the other end into the video-in plug of the TV. That's all there is to it. Now just playback the pictures on the camera and they will display on the TV.

The shortcoming with this method is that you can only show the photos on the memory card within the camera. If you only have a 32MB memory card, then you will have a limited number of photos.

Another means is to use a photo viewing device. The SanDisk Digital Photo Viewer is a reliable device. This neat little gadget sits on top of your TV set and it accepts popular memory cards like CompactFlash, MultiMedia, Secure Digital, SmartMedia and MemoryStick as input. There is a video-out port to connect the device to the TV. Think of it almost like a digital version of a 35mm slide projector.

I've also noticed some DVD players coming out in the market which accept memory cards as input. One of these is the Sampo DVE-631CF. It's a reasonably priced DVD player which also allows you to play back MP3s and JPEGs from both CD-R/RW and CompactFlash Type I cards.

However, whichever of the above options you choose, you're still limited by the amount of memory available on your memory card. Hence, if you have a small capacity memory card, you probably can't show to many pictures at one go.

Perhaps the best solution of all, is to convert your digital photos to DVD format. The DVD you generate can then be played back in any DVD player to display all your pictures as a slideshow. The primary advantage of this method over the others is that you can store many, many photos on a 4GB DVD-R. It's also pretty convenient to send a DVD of pictures (instead of a memory card) to your friends or family members.

All you need is a DVD burner and some special software. The best software I've found for doing this is Ulead CD and DVD PictureShow.

With its easy-to-use tutorials, this software allows you to convert all your digital photos to DVD in a few easy steps. What's more, you can add special effects to your photo slideshow, including transitions, music and DVD menus. There's a full set of tutorials at the Ulead website to guide you.

Once you've converted them to DVD format, the software burns them into a DVD-R for you. Now just insert the DVD into the DVD player and your picture slideshow is ready to go.

We have gone over three options for displaying photos on your TV set. Photos on TV makes much more sense when you have a large group wanting to see your photos. The method you choose is up to you, but keep in mind that the DVD format will let you show off more of your photos. Have fun and enjoy!

Looking into digital photography? Check out this Digital Photography Guide . Get Great Tips on how to take Digital Photographs plus Digital Camera Reviews