Can't see full desktop when connecting laptop to tv

TDevlin · 17 Dec 2011 at 10:39

For the first time ever last night, I thought I would connect my laptop to my tv for watching movies. After lots of swearing and frustration I finally got to watch a movie but part of the frustration came from not being able to see my full desktop on the tv. The top and bottom are both cut off, so it's impossible to access any programs on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Is there any way to fix this?

I'm connecting via an hdmi cable and running windows vista if that helps

Jay794 · 17 Dec 2011 at 10:45

It's not difficult to work assuming your PC detects your TV, it's a resolution problem, just right click on the deskop, go to properties or personalise (i forget which) and somewhere in there it should say something about both your tv and monitor resolution, play around with the tv res until it fits

TDevlin · 17 Dec 2011 at 11:11

Jay794 said:
It's not difficult to work assuming your PC detects your TV, it's a resolution problem, just right click on the deskop, go to properties or personalise (i forget which) and somewhere in there it should say something about both your tv and monitor resolution, play around with the tv res until it fits

Thanks, I'll give that a try this now. I only tried it at my laptop resolution of 1440x900 and tv resolution of 1920x1080. So hopefully something in between will work.

TDevlin · 17 Dec 2011 at 11:27

That's great, 1768x992 was the magic number. Maybe my occassional tourettes will settle down next time I try to watch a movie

CaptainCrash · 17 Dec 2011 at 11:48

TDevlin said:
That's great, 1768x992 was the magic number. Maybe my occassional tourettes will settle down next time I try to watch a movie

You're clearly not using the panel's native resolution though, so it's a less than ideal solution, although if you're simply using it to watch movies it may not be a major issue.

There should be an option for 1:1 pixel mapping somewhere in the TV's setup menus (exactly where and how it's described will depend on the TV make/model), and you might also need to disable overscan in your GFX card drivers.

TDevlin · 17 Dec 2011 at 15:19

CaptainCrash said:
You're clearly not using the panel's native resolution though, so it's a less than ideal solution, although if you're simply using it to watch movies it may not be a major issue.

There should be an option for 1:1 pixel mapping somewhere in the TV's setup menus (exactly where and how it's described will depend on the TV make/model), and you might also need to disable overscan in your GFX card drivers.

It's not a major issue, but all the same I would like to play it at the maximum resolution, so I'll have a wee look at the settings and see what I can do. Thanks.