Help with connecting my lappy to my lcd.

[-m-]

Okay, I've gone on Dell's website and they say they have live chat for tech support, but yet there is no link to be found for it. I'm having a problem with connecting my Dell Studio 1555 via hdmi to my Philips 37" tv. I'm running the hdmi through a switchbox. I've installed the latest drivers for my vid card and it still doesn't even see the tv. I'm getting really frustrated here. Anyone care to help out?

[Leo]

First obvious thing should be to try to run direct to TV to be sure it's not a problem with the box.

[Joseph V]

is there a TV out option in the video card properties?

[-m-]

I'm running an Xbox on one of the other channels of the switch box and it sees it fine on all of them.

My display settings are acting weird. At first it saw the lcd for a minute and now it only has the options for just the notebook. The channel on the switchbox is green and seems to be fine.

[-m-]

Okay so I have this thing almost set up. I've been playing around with my resolutions and picked one that looks great, only it's slightly shifted to the right. Like a little bit of the start button is cut off and there's a black vertical bar on the right hand side of the screen. I've tried changing my tv settings and it doesn't do anything to fix it.

?????

[Tymeless]

See if your video card has a setting where you can dial in your own resolution. I had to do that on my 42" Samsung plasma and the desktop in the livingroom to get it just right. Its still chopping of about a cm of the bottom of the screen.

[-m-]

I pretty much got it now. It clips a little bit off my Power DVD software but none of the video, same with WMP and it's controls but all the visuals are there. But the desktop is fully stretched to all corners, which is what was bugging me most. I just had to mess with it, a lot.

[-m-]

Okay one more question. Whenever I close the lid of my laptop the whole works just stop and whatever I've got on my big screen goes away. I've gone into power settings and have set it to where it does nothing when I shut my lid, but yet it's obviously doing something. Anyone know what setting I need to use? I'm kind of stumped b/c I have hibernate off and have my lid set for it to not do anything whenever I close it. It doesn't shut down, everything just stops playing. ?

[djetaine]

Originally Posted by -m-

Okay one more question. Whenever I close the lid of my laptop the whole works just stop and whatever I've got on my big screen goes away. I've gone into power settings and have set it to where it does nothing when I shut my lid, but yet it's obviously doing something. Anyone know what setting I need to use? I'm kind of stumped b/c I have hibernate off and have my lid set for it to not do anything whenever I close it. It doesn't shut down, everything just stops playing. ?

you are doing everything you need to do, make sure that dell doesnt have an additional power option application installed.
My lenovo has something like that that was annoying so i just uninstalled it.
Oh, also, I have to set mine as always on and turned all the power settings to never.

[-m-]

See I've done all that. It must be an additional Dell setting. Thanks E! I'll look into it further.

Got my lcd mounted on the wall today and a makeshift ent. center together (our new one is in transit still). Feeling more like home. Watched the Pink Floyd Pulse concert dvd while we cleaned up the aftermath and bunny proofed everything. For what we have to work with it looks pretty good but it will look stellar when we can get the cords hidden and the components into a cabinet. I also can't wait for our new leather sofa that's coming with the cabinet.

[MC Twinkie]

I'll bet you its a bios setting. Windows has its own power options in control panel, but often there are bios ones too. If you use an external keyboard, try booting up with the lid down too. you might have to open it up, hit power, and then close it quickly.

What is the video card on your laptop? If its an Nvidia look in the control panel for this. ATI and such are different, but they are there.

[TheHawk]

With Dells, when you have a 2nd monitor connected and close the lid, it readjusts your vid settings so that the 2nd screen (the LCD) is the primary display, which will cause any playing video to fuck up. To avoid this, I either just leave the lid open, or close before I start playing anything and use the TV as the monitor to start the video I want to play.

[-m-]

I have the Mobile Intel 4 Chipset series for video. My control panel is Intel. I wish I did have the Nvidia display adapters b/c it seems like it makes setting this sort of thing up much easier. And thanks Hawk, I can leave the lid open and play it just fine but I'm worried about burning out my lcd on my laptop by just letting it sit there.

[-m-]

Here's another interesting thing. Itunes shuts off my monitor on the laptop whenever I use it for video. We buy season passes for tv shows since we can't get any decent cable around here so we use it a lot. At first I tried pulling in the whole app onto my lcd and running it full screen, and when I did it bounced it back to my laptop. The video is really jumpy if you don't watch it full screen for some reason, so I set it to where video plays in a detached window, which I can set full screen to my lcd. I'm just mostly passing this along to anyone who's trying to do the same thing I am. I have zero patience with technology so setting all of this shit up has had me raise my voice more than a few times in the past couple of days.

I have things about 99% of how I want them but would really like it if it didn't cut off Power DVD and WMP. It only crops some of the control section out but it's annoying, and at first I thought I wasn't going to be able to watch anything with subtitles because the controls on WMP didn't go away if you went full screen, and they cover them up. Then I figured out if I put my mouse back on my lappy monitor they do. I'm surprised honestly at how difficult it's been getting all of this setup. I figured it would be pretty easy thing.

[Deff Gordon]

i use the apple tv to bridge **ALL** of my computers wireless to the HDTV. i use aTV Flash bios hack on the apple tv to open it totally up to run & stream all file types, boxee, ftp, saphire, nito, etc...

fuck a bunch of plugging a computer directly to the tv.

it's all about streaming the content from a computer that's on somewhere else in the house. (full screen & in HD if that's what the content is to begin with)