Hooking up laptop to HD TV via HDMI
Winky
rRegistered User regular
rRegistered User regular
So, I've got this sweet HD TV that I'm trying to hook my laptop up to so that I can watch Netflix on it. I used to do this all the time in the past (exact same laptop and exact same HD TV). I purchased an HDMI cable yesterday and then I went on to spend hours of frustrated finagling without any results. The problem is, I hook up my laptop to the TV, then I go into the nVIDIA control panel (I have a 8600M GT, updated the drivers last night) and I select my TV from the "multiple monitors" menu, and then I "Apply", but no matter what my TV will still display "No Signal", despite clearly being set to the correct HDMI input. I noticed that when I go to change to my TV through the multiple monitors menu, the little image of the HD TV is greyed out, but I can still check the box to make it a monitor. The thing is, when I use an RGB cable it works just fine, and I can get my laptop screen to show up on the TV (I'm using the HDMI cable because I want sound). Does anyone have any idea of how I can get this to work? I'm hoping I didn't buy this super over-priced HDMI cable for nothing.
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First step right here.
Also, don't buy the cables for a penny. The copper is too thin on those and breaks inside of the insulation.
Not to derail this thread, but we make these cables at work and i'd just like to add that when judging for an amount to spend on HDMI cabling two important factors are: fixed or mobile installation? (will you ever unplug it? if so, not the supercheapest cable). Cable length (anything under a meter or two does not require premium cabling at all. They will all perform equally).
Today I dropped by my student store and picked up another $5 3-ft cable. I'll try that out to see if it works instead (unfortunately I don't have any other things that can be connected together with an HDMI cable).
Like I said, I updated the drivers yesterday. Does anyone have some suggestions as to what I might be able to do?
Your video card is probably att too high a resolution to display on your tv. switch it to a lower one
I went ahead and tried it at a bunch of different resolutions. A few that I'm positive worked last time I got it to work.
Also, I messed with the function key for monitor switching, it didn't affect anything.
A VGA cable (which I'm assuming is what you've used in the past) and an HDMI cable are going to work differently on the TV. My TV's VGA inputs supports a number of resolutions, none of which are an perfect match to the TV's resolution so there's always some stretching/scaling going on. The HDMI in only supports a few specific resolutions (480, 720, 1080). So figure out what resolution your TV is, and set your laptop to EXACTLY that resolution to test (or alternatively, find the manual for your TV and see what resolutions the HDMI input supports and set the laptop to one of them). If that still doesn't work, then there's probably something wonky going on with the laptop.
No, when I say worked before I mean I've actually hooked this exact laptop up to this exact TV with a HDMI cable in the past, I haven't done it for 6 months or so and I just moved into a new place and got a new cable and I'm trying to do it again. I tried using the exact same resolution that I did previously. I have a VGA cable as well and that works fine.
Is it possible that the HDMI port on my laptop is borked? The only reason why I didn't think this is the case is because it recognizes that the TV is there, and acts like everything is just fine, but doesn't seem to send the signal.
Thanks for the help guys.
If only modern consoles worked with Netflix…
This is actually the solution I ended up going with :P. I didn't want to do it right away because I didn't have an Xbox Live subscription.