Making use of busted "travel" dvd player's LCD

bloodatonement

So my friend gave me 2 busted travel dvd players. Both of the screens are still functional, it's the dvd portion that's died. What I'd like to be able to do is find a way to use one of the LCDs as a secondary monitor for my PC (basically just want to use it to throw some status widgets on it). The system has a video in, but I don't know if that means getting the sytem up and running and then selecting that input each time i turn it on. I figure its a long shot but do most LCDs like that use the same type of connector? If so is there an easy way to turn them into a monitor?

DrFrylock

If the LCD itself is anything like the ones they use in laptops, then it's basically impossible to extract the LCD portion and hook it up to anything meaningful since it needs a custom digital controller driving it, and that will be in the circuitry of the player. If the player works well enough that you can turn it on and enable the external video input (which I'm assuming is composite or S-video) then you can use it as an external monitor with a video card that has a TV-out, or you could use a 2nd VGA output with a TV converter. You'll still be limited to TV resolutions and refresh rates, which aren't so good, but for little status widgets it might be fine.

amateurhour

They're not useless or hard to remove like laptop LCD's. Quite different actually. They're the preferred method for tinkering with smaller LCD pannels in other stuff. Why not build a projector

www.lumenlab.com (note: I'm not a mod on this site, I didn't make it, I don't sell anything on it)

It's basically a giant DIY projector community. They can be made for hundreds less than the competition, and run on $30 bulbs instead of $300 ones.

Or you could put the LCD on a custom frame for consoles, or have a small teevee in the shower/bathroom/kitchen, or build a micro-itx based computer inside of a small custom case, attach the lcd, and have a huge laptop that looks horrible but is really, really cool.

bloodatonement

amateurhour wrote: »

They're not useless or hard to remove like laptop LCD's. Quite different actually. They're the preferred method for tinkering with smaller LCD pannels in other stuff. Why not build a projector

www.lumenlab.com (note: I'm not a mod on this site, I didn't make it, I don't sell anything on it)

It's basically a giant DIY projector community. They can be made for hundreds less than the competition, and run on $30 bulbs instead of $300 ones.

Or you could put the LCD on a custom frame for consoles, or have a small teevee in the shower/bathroom/kitchen, or build a micro-itx based computer inside of a small custom case, attach the lcd, and have a huge laptop that looks horrible but is really, really cool.

So what can I use to connect to the LCD?