laptop to lcd tv

[nandish]

I have got a 15inch laptop non wide screen. I recently bought a 37inch lg time machine. How can i connect my laptop to the lcd tv??? Which is better rgb or s-video? How does the resolution work? Please explain.
Thanks

[redwudz]

RGB would be better, but most laptops output S-video or VGA. VGA world be better than S-video, but S-video is more common on TVs. I would hook up the cables first before booting the laptop, then you should be able to adjust the settings. And be sure to set your TV for the S-video or VGA input.

For setup, go to 'Control Panel>Display>Settings.' From there it would depend on your video chipset. For my HP laptop, it shows two monitors. You can adjust the settings for your second monitor, which will be your TV by clicking on it. You might check 'Extend my Windows desktop to this monitor' and you should see it on the TV if you have the proper settings.

Between the manual for your TV and your laptop manual you should not have too many problems setting it up.

[nandish]

my lcd tv is wide screen but my laptop is not. will it stretch the desktop after i take the output from laptop?

[redwudz]

No, you will probably have to adjust for the best settings if you want to fill the screen. If you go to your 'Control Panel>Display>Settings>Advanced>Monitor' and uncheck 'Hide modes that this monitor cannot display', that will open up your full display settings for your video card. Then go to 'Adapter' on the next tab and click' List All Modes'. Then you should see all the settings available from your video card. Only use these extended settings with your TV and not your laptop screen and be careful. Really out of spec settings can damage a TV if left running too long. If you get no picture on the TV, reset and change the settings. If you have a NTSC TV, use 60Hz settings. For PAL, use 50Hz.

It may be a bit of a pain to get the right settings that work best with your TV, so try a few different ones. I use 848 X 480 True Color, 60Hz and it works fairly well with my video projector. Check your TV manual for it's resolution settings. Once you find what works best, then you just use that from then on.

You can stretch the computer 'desktop' to fit the TV screen most times. But it may look distorted if you watch a video that way. BTW, if you are planning to use a LCD TV for a computer monitor, they don't work well for that. Especially S-Video. You may find text very hard to read. But they will work fine for video. Even S-video can look good if you have a good quality video source. Better would be VGA or best, DVI input. But few laptops have a DVI output.

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[lordsmurf]

My laptop has an nVidia card, and it has a dual-desktop feature. I have both my normal widescreen laptop LCD with a desktop, and then the tv acts as a secondary monitor with another desktop. I can drag what I want to watch to the tv's desktop and everything else is left on the LCD.