Sewell# SW-31000 (USB - HDMI converter box)

I have a laptop that I want to use on my Visio HDTV. It has both VGA and HDMI inputs. My laptop only has a VGA output. My daughter, bless her heart, borrowed my VGA-VGA cable...probably permanently. No big loss because it was really cumbersome and required a separate 3.5 audio jack to handle the sound input.

Anyways, researching options on the net, I stumbled across this rather elegant solution-
http://sewelldirect.com/Sewell-HD-Deck-USB-to-HDMI.asp

If I understand the marketing hype, the laptop USB output will carry the digital audio/video signal to this converter box and output the signal as a HDMI signal. This would be a cleaner and less messy connection.

Anyone have dealings with Sewell? Your thoughts about this approach?

some people really like converters like this, other folk seem unhappy about jerky outputs

So there might be an issue with signal speeds. You might want to look up your laptop specs to (say) see if the VGA is coming off the mobo, or off a gpu on pci, or off a gpu on pcie, and compare that with the usb bus -- and for that comparison you should probably figure out what generation usb your laptop has and whether the SW-31000 supports your full usb speed

If your laptop had built in HDMI, I'd go with the HDMI connection no doubt. But, there's no way I'd spend $100 on a device like that when I'd be almost guaranteed to get better overall performance using less than $10 worth of cables. I've never dealt with Sewell, but I can tell you you're most likely better off with dealing with the eye sore of using separate cables for audio and video.