OT: Help connecting notebook to HDTV

Ryan5UW · Post #1 » by **Ryan5UW** » Sun Jan 6, 2008 7:47 am

I know there are some guys on the board who have a lot of knowledge about this, so I thought I'd see if anyone as any ideas.

I spent 5 hours on the phone with HP today trying to get my notebook to display on my Samsung DLP tv. I just got a replacement notebook and got them to throw in a few upgrades including the nvidia geforce 8400m gs video card and an HD-DVD drive (go figure, I finally get a high definition disc drive, and 2 days later it looks like I chose the wrong one, but it was free, so whatever, we don't need to discuss HD-DVD vs Blu-ray). Anyway, I'm trying to connect it via HDMI, but cannot get it to work. When I try to switch the display to the tv, I get a real scrambled picture (lines through it, colors wrong) for a second or two, and then it goes back to displaying something like no signal or weak signal. I've tried everything I can think of... any ideas?

I've had very good luck with HP customer service recently with another issue, but when the case manager I was working with called me back and told me the HDMI connection on my notebook was input, not output, I wished I could shoot him through the phone. The notebook even came with something (and I read it to him) that talks about using the HDMI connection to play HD-DVDs on an HDTV.

Ok, sorry for the venting, but any ideas?

bigkurty · Post #2 » by **bigkurty** » Sun Jan 6, 2008 8:13 am

well I would probably go into the settings and check the display resolution and frequency. If your comp is trying to display at too high of a resolution or at a frequency (Hertz) your TV can't handle, well then it just wont work. If you TV will do a full 1080P, set your display settings so that it outputs 1920 x 1080 resolution at 60 hz for example to that monitor. That should be a signal your TV can handle and would be the max resolution your TV could handle. If your TV will only do 1080i as a max, set it to 1920 x 1080 and 30 hz. I hope that helps.

Ryan5UW · Post #3 » by **Ryan5UW** » Sun Jan 6, 2008 7:10 pm

bigkurty wrote:well I would probably go into the settings and check the display resolution and frequency. If your comp is trying to display at too high of a resolution or at a frequency (Hertz) your TV can't handle, well then it just wont work. If you TV will do a full 1080P, set your display settings so that it outputs 1920 x 1080 resolution at 60 hz for example to that monitor. That should be a signal your TV can handle and would be the max resolution your TV could handle. If your TV will only do 1080i as a max, set it to 1920 x 1080 and 30 hz. I hope that helps.

Thanks for the ideas. I hadn't messed around with the refresh rate very much. I think my tv can do 720p or 1080i. I was able to finally to get it to display a constant image (so much for that dumb sh*t's theory of it not being an output), but it still looks like crap...

Any more ideas?