I have a dell deminsion 1100 and i want to be able to play DVD from my computer on my tv and if its possible use my tv screen for my computer screen. What do you recomend to get this done?

Look into ATI  "all-in-wonder" cards.

Never seen one work well

Quoted: Look into ATI  "all-in-wonder" cards.

I have one and use use it all the time but the ATI software is loaded with bugs, The good news is the DVD programing is pretty well bug free.

Using TV screens as computer screens usually doesn't work well because computer screens are higher-definition than regular television screens. "Regular" television screens are (effectively) about 640 x 1000 pixels, where now many 17" CRT computer screens are 1200 x 1600 pixels. The only televisions that really look decent when used as computer screens are high definition televisions, LCD's or plasmas.
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It is possible to do this a few different ways. The price depends somewhat on what videocard you've got now.
One question I would ask first: what type of videocard does your computer currently use, and what slot type is it? (onboard video, PCI-e/PCI-express, AGP or PCI)?
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I'm using a GeForce FX5200 that I paid 45 shipped for. The machine has a 950mhz Athlon with 512MB sdram. CDROM, DVDR. It's running FreeBSD 6.0 with VLC as the media player. Everythings connected wireless right now until we drop cat5.

With a 60 dollar TV tuner card theres an open source software called mythtv that will let you burn tv shows or record them to a hard drive as well as scheduling recordings.

DVI cables will replace the current s-vid.

I have a ATI All in Wonder 9000. I only ever watch tv on my comp with it as I never bought the cables to hook it up to my tv. I'm getting a new card about a week after christmas, so if you're in the market for one, I'll give it to you for a good price as I'd have no use for it anymore. IM me if you'd be interested and we can work something out.

almost any halfway decent video card these days can output to a tv

After pondering this a bit I remembered something:

There is something else to know if you are using WindowsXP for this computer: WindowsXP restricts what video outputs can be used for DRM media, and will only send copy-protected video media to digital outputs that are known to be compliant. Analog video outputs (such as RCA, for common video hookups) aren't compliant, so Windows will not play the content unless the analog port is disabled in its driver software.

There is a way around this: to watch DVD's on a TV hooked to your computer's TV-out connection, you must first "rip" (copy) the DVD's and decrypt them to your hard-drive with a program such as DVD-Decryptor, and then watch the unencrypted .vob files copied to your hard-drive--NOT the actual DVD. Decrypting doesn't take very long, perhaps ten minutes for a typical 90-minute movie, using a decent PC. Once the files are decrypted, most any movie viewer can play them--Power DVD, or even Windows Media Player will then play them out over any video connection.

Linux setups don't have this problem as they make no attempt to prevent copying of DRM media.
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Not sure if this is overkill for your situation, but hubby and I love our Hauppauge 250 card (with cable TV + Viewsonic projector). SageTV is pretty cool for recording/viewing shows, too. We run TheaterTek for viewing DVDs.

www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr250.html

what are the specs of your laptop