HDMI INPUT?

@yofunkylady  The HDMI port on your laptop is an output. It is meant to be used to send a video signal from your laptop to a display or TV.  It cannot be used as an HDMI input to receive a video signal from another device, like a CD/DVD player.  Laptops with HDMI inputs are extremely rare.  I've only seen a small handful of models ever introduced over the last several years that have them.  If you want your laptop to receive an HDMI signal from another device and display it on your system, you would need an HDMI capture device.  Elgato is one manufacturer that makes video capture devices.  Take a look at their HD60S or HD60S+, for example, or their 4K60S or 4K60S+ if you want that support at higher cost.

@yofunkylady  By the way, I will add that if you want to capture video from copy protected sources, such as commercial DVDs, that may not work through a capture devices, because copy protection is specifically meant to prevent people from making recordings of the content.  Capture devices are more commonly used for capturing output from video game consoles, for example.  But if all you want to do is watch DVDs on your Dell Latitude laptop, it would have been much easier to just buy a USB DVD drive.  They're cheaper, smaller, and much more convenient than set-top DVD players.  Just connect it to a USB port on your system and install some DVD playback software.  VLC is a free and excellent choice.

Hey . Can I watch physical Dvds with the USB DVD drive? How do you do that.. sorry if I sound dumb.. this is a new issue I have no experience with..

Ahhhh..thanks JP..

I had done some research on this but didnt know the laptop port was input not output 

So thanks.

I wanted to watch this disk on my laptop instead of TV because its an expensive photo editing software. And my photos are all on my laptop.

My dvd drive on my laptop is broke.

A special thanks for clueing me in on a video capture device.. Ill check these out tonight.. take care..

@yofunkylady  Glad I can help, and no worries at all. A USB DVD drive works just like a built-in DVD drive, except that it’s external — just like you can have an internal hard drive and an external hard drive, but they work the same way. The difference between that and a set-top DVD player like you have is that when you have a set-top DVD player, it does all of the actual processing work to decode the data on the DVD into a raw video signal, and then it sends that raw video signal out of its HDMI port. But a laptop is completely capable of doing that type of processing on its own, since it can run software that can do that. So with a laptop, all you need is the physical DVD drive that you can insert the actual disc into and that can then send that data to the laptop for decoding. That’s how a USB DVD drive works. Again, think of it as just a replacement for the built-in DVD drive your system already has, because that’s exactly how it works. If you search Amazon or any other electronics retailer for “USB DVD drive”, you should find several options. Many of them will be small and capable of drawing all necessary power from the USB port they will also be using for data, so you’ll just have a single cable to connect between your DVD drive and your laptop. Then the DVD drive itself will appear in Windows, just like an internal DVD drive would, and when you insert a disc, Windows will ask you what you want to do with it. At that point you can choose to play the DVD with whatever software you want, like VLC as I suggested earlier. And a USB DVD drive will also be much more useful than a set-top DVD player as well, because you could use it for other purposes, such as listening to audio CDs, ripping CDs and DVDs to your hard drive, and possibly burning CDs and DVDs if you get a USB DVD drive that is capable of doing that. Good luck!