Question about Vid Card Composite Out

Raggaholic

In my living room, I've finally got a decent size HDTV. I've got a computer hooked up to it using the video card's Composite Out, but I'm having problems.

I can see the computer desktop, but that's all I see (and ugly blue bars on the side because it's a widescreen TV). There are no icons, and when I play videos, they don't show either.

I primarily did the hookup for video watching, so if it's a case where I just can't watch them through the TV like that, I'm going to take the setup down. I'm pretty sure that I can do that, but I'm doing something wrong. I figure it's not a connection issue (or a graphics card output/settings issue) because I can see the desktop.

Any ideas?

nexuscrawler

Does your vid card have a control panel type thingy? That's where you'd set the video out settings

Raggaholic

nexuscrawler wrote:

Does your vid card have a control panel type thingy? That's where you'd set the video out settings

I used the control panel (nVidia Settings/Desktop Manager) to set up the output and settings for the TV. I'm getting a picture of the blank desktop on the TV with no icons. If I play a video, it doesn't show up on the TV either.

neth

do you have another monitor hooked up? perhaps it is set up to dual view and the "desktop" is on the other monitor, or where it thinks there should be one.

also, inside the video card manager, there should be a button that says identify monitors or something, click that and see what number appears on teh tv screen, if any.

Raggaholic

neth wrote:

do you have another monitor hooked up? perhaps it is set up to dual view and the "desktop" is on the other monitor, or where it thinks there should be one.

also, inside the video card manager, there should be a button that says identify monitors or something, click that and see what number appears on teh tv screen, if any.

I had that taken care of. There is an auto detect (I guess) which recognized the TV right away. I have them set up on independent displays, rather than cloning. The monitor is setup at one resolution with settings and the TV is set up as another.

Thanks for the help so far, guys. Keep the comments coming, as we may be able to start narrowing stuff down.

neth

so there is a monitor hooked up then? can you drag windows media player (or your movie application of choice) to the tv screen and then full screen it? not having a desktop and start menuy is perfectly normal for a tv display if you have a monitor hooked up and have it set as the primary

try setting the TV as the primary display.

vonPoonBurGer

There are two possibilities here, I think.

One is that your icons and start menu are there, you just can't seem them due to overscan. If that's the case, you should be able to use to overscan scaling feature built into the latest Nvidia drivers to shrink the video output to match your TV.

The other possibility, and the more likely one from the sound of things, is that everything is defaulting to the primary display. I've never done much with a dual-head setup, so I don't have much advice in terms of configuring it to get certain windows on one display or the other. Try what neth said, see how that goes.

Regarding the blue bars on either side, that's because you've got a widescreen TV, but you're sending a TV-shaped signal. If possible, see if you can change the output to send a widescreen HDTV signal; I know this is supported in 6000-series and higher Geforce cards, so it may depend on which chip you have. Since you're using a composite cable, though, I don't think you'll get that option. You'd need to move up to a component or DVI cable before sending an HDTV signal would become an option. The other possibility would be to have your TV stretch the picture to fit; I know my TV has a bunch of different scaling options for this purpose, check your TVs onscreen setup menu.

nexuscrawler

If you setup the tv as a secondary monitor having a blank desktop is normal. You basically extended your desktop space onto the TV. Look at the monitor positions in your desktop control panel. It'll show the relation of the two monitrs. the TV will likely be the 2nd on set to the right of theprimary. Try picking up a window and draginng your cursor off your primary monitor. it should appear on the TV.

Honestly though for what you want cloning the monitors is probably a better option.

Raggaholic

THANK YOU!!

Your suggestion worked like gangbusters. I just had to drag stuff there, and it's fine. Since the shows aren't formatted for widescreen, they play with black bars on the side (which I'm absolutely fine with).

I would have never figured this out on my own. I guess that would also explain why Bloodrayne has been acting crazy.

(Two quick things. The TV is hooked up via component cables. I've always mixed up component and composite, as I usually refer to composite as RCA. Also, cloning the desktops are bad for me because they operate at totally different resolution and brightness/contrast/gamma settings.)

Thanks again guys. Damn, I love this board.