Movies from hard drive on TV...

Hey all,

I've been trying to get something to work that is seemingly so simple. I have a movie on my hard drive and can view it just fine using any player but I want to watch it on my TV. My friend does it all the time. I bought all the necessary cables, but no dice. I have an IBM Thinkpad T43 with an S-Video out port, but my TV doesn't have an S-Video in port, so I bought one of those (very expensive, by the way) connectors that turns the S-Video into a "regular" cable. What am I missing??? This is ridiculous. Please help!

 

what type of vid card do you have? I have an Nvidia and I have to go into my video properties (right click on desktop>properties) and I have to initiate the second moniter from there. I haven't done it in a while, so I don't recall the exact steps, but once you have everything connected, go into the properties, and there should be some checkboxes to extend the moniter (there should be two boxes in the properties, one with a 1 inside and one with a 2 inside it).

I know with the nvidia drivers it took me a good half hour to get it all sorted out. Sorry, I am not near a computer that has those settings right now, so I can't recall what they look like. There should be a check box if you click on the "2" monitor, which reads "extend my desktop onto this monitor" or something like that.

Also, make sure you aren't connecting through anything (vcr) because the computer will automatically sense it and think you are trying to copy the movie and it will mess up the picture (took me forever to figure that out! My screen would keep getting lighter and darker over and over again!)

 

Thanks for the reply. I have an ATI video card. And yea, I see the the "2nd monitor" under Display Properties. My TV does NOT have an S-Video input. Does that matter being that I have all the connectors?

 

You can't run high resolutions on older TVs. Click on (highlight) the #2 screen, then you will able to set the resolution for that screen. Start at less than 800 X 600 and work up.

Matt

 

You should have an ATI icon in the system tray. Right-click on it and select Help -> ATI Television Display.

 

I haven't played around with it for a while again as it is so frustrating. I even called IBM tech support and got this link:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-58625

Now I have the ATI card. I have the cable and the connector, which converts the S-Video signal into a "regular" cable, so to speak, and it just won't budge. However, I think the Thinkpad did recognize the fact that it was connected to a TV as I could go into the Advanced properties under Display and click on the red circle to I guess "turn on" the TV mode??? My point is, when I disconnected all the cables and called it a night, AGAIN, and tried playing around with the power button, it would no longer let me! So I look at this at least as good news! lol...

Now, should I do this with option 1 or 2? When I click Display Properties, it shows a 1 in the foreground and a 2 in the background. It would make sense to me to use "2" and start with 800x600 resolution.

By the way, I never rebooted my machine after trying all of this. Does the system have to be rebooted?

This is so frustrating and annoying! Please help!

 

I would turn off your computer. Connect all cables, and then restart.

Right click on desktop and go to properties. Go to the settings tab.

Is the box with the two "greyed" out? if so, click on it. A line at the bottom of the screen (that was greyed out) should become active, with a check box (near the resolution settings) that you have to click to enable the "2" box. Then, both 1 and 2 should be black, not greyed out.

At that point, your screen should show up on your tv/external monitor.

If it does not, maybe the resolution on "2" is too high, so make it go really low, and see if that makes it show up. You may have to play with the settings for "2" for a bit before it shows up on the external monitor/tv.