I have an old laptop and when I hook it up to a tv the tv displays the desktop background but nothing else, then when I play a video on the laptop it automatically plays full screen on the tv.
the question I have is how do I force a regular pc running vista (ah hell XP too) to do the same? all I get is the tv becomes a second monitor and I am constantly dragging crap over to the tv to play and having to treat it as a second monitor when all I want the damn thing to do is play my friggin videos
note this wouldnt really be an issue except I am teaching classes, so I often run 20 short clips in a single class and it gets really really old.
specific video cards and set ups arent listed simply because I hope to use this setting at all of our locations and that means different computers.
What you want to do is a function of the video drivers for your specific video cards. So although the process to get that working is similar, it does vary a little bit depending on whether you have an ATI or an Nvidia based card.
First thing to do is to make sure you have the latest drivers for your particular card. then navigate to the control panel for your card (you can usually do that by right clicking the desktop).
Once there it’s a mater of configuring your TV to work as you describe. Unfortunately it’s been a while since I’ve had to do what you want so I don’t recall the exact settings. I believe with an ATI card it’s all about making sure you have all video playback mounted as full screen on your TV display and setting your TV to “Clone mode”.
thanks, I will give that a shot…with a bit of luck I can figure that out.