Playing movie on TV using TV Out

[scotty47]

I have a Radeon 9250 with TV Out and want to play my dvd's on my tv , I have got it set up that I get my desktop on the TV screen, but when i play the movie I see the PowerDVD screen but no picture, Can anyone here help me with this. Thanks in advance...................John

[redwudz]

Control Panel>Display>Settings>Advanced>Displays. You should have a selector for the TV there. You should also check 'Overlay'. Do this when your TV is plugged into the computer.

[scotty47]

Thank you for the reply, when I select overlay it says it is Automatically activated when a movie is played, otherwise all setting are set in control panel, can see desktop on tv........................John

[redwudz]

I got that same card today and what I finally did after giving up setting the card for dual display, overlay settings, etc., with Power DVD and seeing a black screen, was to use the freeware VLC Media Player.

Just start it and drag it over to the TV window, then associate your DVDs with it. You should be able to just click on the DVD and have it play it in the TV window, leaving the monitor window free for regular computer use. It has plenty of adjustments for DVD viewing.

Since I also use VLC with my files viewed on my monitor, I installed a second version on my 2nd hard drive and have that for monitor use. That saves having to drag the video window back and forth between the two displays. You can have multiple instances of it, as long as they are installed in two different places.

VLC seems to work on the TV display when all my other viewing programs would show a blank screen. Give it a try if you can't figure out ATI's setup. I can even watch two videos at the same time, though I don't know why I would need that feature.

[scotty47]

Thank you redwudz, but am afraid you totaly lost me, how do you drag VLC Media Player over to the TV screeen and associate your DVD with it?
...........................John

[redwudz]

EDIT: Sorry. I revised my method. Turn off 'autoplay' for the DVD drive you use for playing. Then you go into 'Folder Options' with any open folder. It's in 'Tools' toward the bottom. Select 'File Types' and scroll down until you find 'DVD Video'. Click on that icon. Select 'Advanced'. Click on 'Play with VLC media player'. Click on 'Set Default'. You can also change the icon to VLC's. Now when you click on a DVD, VLC will be your default player and will automatically play the DVD.

On dragging, when you have both your TV and your monitor active, you can drag any program or file from one screen to the other. Left click on the open VLC player window while it's playing the video and drag it over to the TV screen, usually to the right. Then go to VLC on the TV and right click the screen.

In the window, choose 'Miscellaneous>Preferences>Video and click 'Fullscreen video output'. That will set it to always play full screen. Click 'Save' at the bottom and you are done.

Now a final trick I use. On the desktop, click 'Start' then right click on your DVD player icon. Select 'Create Shortcut'. It will make this shortcut on your desktop. Drag this over to your TV window and leave it in the middle of the screen. From now on when you click on this icon your DVD should play on your TV in fullscreen mode.

VLC has a lot of adjustments, it's really a great program. It will play almost anything as it uses it's own codecs. If you have XVID videos, it plays them also. Hope this helps.

[scotty47]

Thank you red redwudz I got it working, now just got to make my desktop look clearer, think I should have bought video card with remote to control sound. thanks again................John