Viewing on TV through laptop

danyosan

I have just purchased the various cables in order to watch the movies I have on my laptow through my TV. The problem I'm having is, whatever is on my laptop screen appears on my TV, but if I play anything through any of the media players (WMP, Real, Power DVD etc) where the video should be playing on the TV is just blank, although I get sound.

Anyone help me out here?

Noelie

Is the media playing before you connect the cables? that sometimes happens to me, just restart the media once all the cable are attached

danyosan

No, i have the cables attached before I even boot up the laptop.

Khannie

Try turning off hardware acceleration in the media player. I had a similar problem trying to screenshot mplayer.

Hobbes

It might be macrovision detection either in the DVD player software, DVD hardware or the TV that is blocking it. Do you get anything at all? what cables are you using?

danyosan

I have a 3.5mm jack plug <-> 2x RCA plug, an S-VHS adaptor Mini DIN+3x RCA sockets <-> scart and an S-VHS video connection lead.

The weird thing is, if I'm on a webpage with an embedded flash player, I can view that on the TV.

Tom Dunne

danyosan wrote:

The weird thing is, if I'm on a webpage with an embedded flash player, I can view that on the TV.

Yes, this is common.

What is happening is, you have the laptop LCD enabled and the output to the TV enabled (correct me if I'm wrong). With most laptop video cards, video files can only play on one of the two screens.

What you need to do is cycle through the screen selection (usually using a key combination such as Fn-F4 or something like that) so there is nothing displayed on your laptop lcd and all output goes to the tv.

danyosan

Thanks Tom, I reckon that'll solve the problem alright.

danyosan

I just tried what you suggested Tom. No joy. Could it be that the TV's are too old? Seems strange that I can see everyhting else apart from the media window though.

8T8

Try Media Player Classic click view options then click on output.

Now under Directshow Video select Overlay Mixer as the output & click okay and try playing something on the other display using MPC.

If that fails update your graphics card drivers.

zilog_jones

danyosan wrote:

I just tried what you suggested Tom. No joy. Could it be that the TV's are too old? Seems strange that I can see everyhting else apart from the media window though.

There's no reason why your TV wouldn't be able to display video but shows everything fine. It's a problem with the video overlays like what tom dunne said, in that your graphics card isn't configured to show them on the TV output.

danyosan

So how do I solve this then? . Is it going to be a case of opening up the laptop and changing a card?

Sorry for being completely oblivious to this

calex71

what kind of graphics card is in the laptop?

8T8

danyosan wrote:

So how do I solve this then? . Is it going to be a case of opening up the laptop and changing a card?

Sorry for being completely oblivious to this

You can't change the graphics chip in a notebook the best you can do is update the display drivers, if you tell us which one we can point you in the right direction.

Also did you try Media Player Classic with the overlay mixer like I suggested ??

danyosan

mobility radeon 9000, does that sound like the graphics card?

Havent had a chance yet 8t8, gonna try later.

danyosan

Just tried it 8t8...no joy.

Spipov

if u check in ur settings, especially if this is an ati control panel, check displays. laptop screen and tv should be on. check to make sure then that if u want to watch on tv, the tv one appears as default ( big square) and laptop switches to the two windows - secondary. that should work then.

danyosan

Spipov wrote:

if u check in ur settings, especially if this is an ati control panel, check displays. laptop screen and tv should be on. check to make sure then that if u want to watch on tv, the tv one appears as default ( big square) and laptop switches to the two windows - secondary. that should work then.

I've done all that. I am getting a screen shot on the TV, only the media player window is blank.

8T8

Pre-preparation go into Add/Remove in the Windows Control panel and look for any ATI entry's like driver or control panel and uninstall them if none are present then just proceed with below.

Step 1: install .NET if you already haven't as the ATI driver control panel requires this.

Step 2: Download ATI drivers from this link the one called the Catalyst software suite.

Step 3: Run the installer it will extract files to an ATI folder & run itself, there is a strong chance it will refuse to install stating your Mobility GPU is not supported. If on the remote chance it does proceed without error then you can skip the steps below.

Step 4: Download the Mobility Modder and run it & point it at the ATI extracted folder, it will modify the files to support the GPU.

Step 5: Go into the ATI folder and run the setup.exe to initiate the driver install, once it's finished you will have to reboot the laptop.

The mobile versions of the GPU are no different from the desktop parts but with older generation mobile GPU's ATI left it up to the vendor to support the GPU with driver updates and did not allow the use of it's own driver updates, the Mobility Modder simply corrects that.


Right with all that done you will now have the most up to date display driver installed on the system with the ATI Catalyst Control Centre control panel as well. When you first run the control panel (right click on the desktop or red ATI tray icon) select advanced mode and simply go into the multi-display section and re-establish your dual display setup & see if video works now.

danyosan

Jeez... I hope I can get through all that...lol!! Thanks very much for all that 8t8. I'll give it a go when I get a chance. I reckon your defo right about the vendor updates. The company I bought the laptop from installed hardly anything on the machine.