Laptop to TV resolution problem

Oliver

So I've got a Dell e1505 laptop that I want to use as basically an HTPC, movie watching, emulation, internet, etc. It has a 945GM intel graphics chipset and I am hooking it up to my flatscreen (Panasonic L47E50) via VGA cable. The problem is that the highest resolution I can select when outputting to the TV is 1024 x 768 which kind of sucks (the only other resolution available to select is 800 x 600). The laptop screen itself is 1200 x 800, and I can even output 1900 x 1200 to the laptop screen although then the picture becomes too big for the screen and you have to scroll to navigate the whole thing.

Anyway, I pulled the EDID info from my TV and tried editing the video driver, as is suggested in several places around the net, but sadly it didn't work. I figured I was just out of luck, but decided to try one last test: At work we have an LG LCD HDTV, so I brought the laptop in and hooked up to that with the same VGA cable, and surprisingly I could select multiple resolutions up to and including 1900 x 1080 (however the resolution list wasn't as big as it is when just outputting to the laptop screen). So, it looks like it is maybe my TV that is the problem, but I really have no idea where to go from here. Any suggestions?

MushroomStick

Some tvs impose a resolution limit on signals received via a vga cable. So maybe the laptop isn't the problem.

Oliver

I agree, I don't necessarily think the laptop is the problem. However, the tv allows me to tell it the vga input resolution by selecting from a list. This list includes both 1200x800 and 1366x768. Both of which I would be happy with if I could select the laptop to output as such. So while I don't think the tv is limiting me to 1024x768 specifically, it has something to do with the tv since I can get a high resolution when connecting to a different tv with the same cable.

Edit: I think it may be a problem with the interaction between the tv and the laptop. As in, maybe the LG tv I tested with could properly identify to the laptop the resolutions it will accept, but for some reason my Panasonic won't do that and my laptop just defaults to two low resolution choices.

Great Scott

Many (most?) TVs will only accept certain resolutions via VGA cable. I'm going to go ahead and guess that your laptop doesn't have DVI or HDMI out? It's highly likely that the only resolution both sides can agree on is 1024x768 and 800x600. On that note, if you can have both displays active at the same time, I think the Intel graphics control panel will let you 2:1 downsample your panel image on the TV. Which should look less blurry.

Oliver

No HDMI or DVI or I would probably be using one of those. The thing about that explanation that doesn't make any sense to me is that I know that my TV is capable of accepting both 1200x800 and 1366x768 and that the laptop is capable sending both of those resolutions to its own screen at least.

Great Scott

From what little I can tell, that TV explicitly doesn't support most PC resolutions. Also, it looks like the Intel GMA 950 specifically doesn't support 1366x768 on VGA outputs. The only resolutions that your devices share for sure is 480p (which is covered by downscaling 800x600), 720p (which is a downscale of 1024x768), and 1080p (which doesn't work over a VGA connector).

In other words, without HDMI (which that Intel chipset definitely supports) you might be stuck.

Here's what I've used in the past: http://www.hdfury.com/products/hdfury-i/ It's an active box that converts Analog (VGA) to Digital (HDMI). It's rather expensive but will force the laptop signal into something the TV will accept.

Oliver

Wow that is expensive haha. Thanks for the info, but that is in the price range of i would just scrap the laptop and build a real htpc instead.

I guess what I was basing my hope on was that I could output 1200x800 to a different tv and my tv explicitly states that it will accept that resolution over vga.

Great Scott

That's odd. So we know that the TV will work but it doesn't.... which tells us the Intel video driver is wonky. Which is something many many people have found.

Can you try different (older and newer) video drivers for your Laptop? Maybe try the very first set that Dell put out? That might help.

I've had a ton of experience trying to get updated Intel video drivers working for games, and I've seen that newer/fixed drivers break features like video-out.

Oliver

Tried finding an earlier driver but the only link I found was broken, any suggestions on where to look? Intel actually has a newer driver available, but I get a 'not manufacturer (meaning dell) approved' type error when trying to install it.

Regarding the driver not working though, the weird thing is that I could output a much higher definition to an lg tv using the same vga cable.