im trying to watch movies on my tv that i have on my laptop

im using an s video cable to connect the two

everything can be seen just fine (desktop...i can play nesticle just fine)

i open wmp and you can see the frame/skin, but when the movie starts playing, you can see it on the laptop but on the tv its just black, even in full screen mode

same with vlc

wtf mate

8/24/2007 1:39:38 PM

re-install drivers...check overlay settings.

8/24/2007 1:46:05 PM

wha does that mean

8/24/2007 4:57:00 PM

bttt

8/24/2007 10:44:23 PM

this is a video driver setting. the video overlay is kind of like a virtual screen in your video memory where the graphics card renders the video. the overlay is then merged with the desktop display before being sent to your monitor or TV.

overlays are only generated for accelerated desktops. i don't know of any graphics cards that will accelerate more than 1 desktop.

it sounds like your laptop LCD is accelerated. when an application tries to use hardware rendering, the video card will render it in the video overlay and only the part of the video that appears on the LCD will be displayed.

you have 3 options. (1) disable hardware rendering in the playback application. this will allow the video to span both displays. (2) enable overlay "cloning" (the name for this may be different depending on your vendor). this will make the video overlay appear in full-screen on your secondary display when it's in use. (3) make the TV your accelerated (or "primary" display).

(1) needs to be done in WMP, VLC, or whatever application you watch videos with
(2) and (3) are driver settings that are changed using your graphics card's software. a lot of drivers add tabs to the display properties dialog (right-click desktop -> properties) or the advanced dialog that comes up when you click the advanced button on the display tab of the display properties dialog.

8/25/2007 12:32:18 AM