Anyone try to hook a laptop to the TV?

[FleistLoC]

Hi all,

I've used monitor and audio cables to hook my dell xps laptop to my 61" Samsung DLP. Call me crazy, but I'd like to see how it's like to fight NMs in surround sound, using a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I play FF with windower 3.3, so when I look at my laptop monitor, it's "windowed" as it should be.

When I transfer the monitor signal to the television, it shows FFXI in full screen, rather than windowed as it would appear on my laptop. Another thing which is rather annoying is that the chat box is hidden off the bottom of the television screen.

I'd like to see it windowed, or if it has to be in full screen, I'd at least like to see an unchopped screen of the game. Anyone have a solution?

Regards,

 

[DarkMagnus]

Modern standard t.v maxes at 1024x768. Any higher and u lose a portion of the input video. Older tv's are much lower at about 640x480 or so. To see the entire picture, you need to lower the res of ffxi to at least 1024xXXX (if your tv supports that) or lower.

 

[Arkangel]

its because your moniter screen is a bigger portion than that of your TV, you will have to shrink the sceen size on your TV so that you whole lap top screen will be seen. . . . . .


. . . just try changing the screen size in the TV options

 

[DarkMagnus]

I don't know if you have a hdtv or just a standard rear projection one, but you lower the resolution on your "laptop" not the tv. You are outputting a signal that exceeds the televisions resolution. The model tv would help.

 

[Orestes]

I've done this with my 42" DLP using the DVI port on the back. Computer monitors usually support higher resolutions then TV's so FFXI will not be as "crisp" looking. Especially if your stretching 1024 x 768 pixels across 60 inches of TV.

Some of the newer DLP's support 1080p, which is 1920 x 1080 pixels. If you've got one of those then it will probably look a lot better.

Have you tried adjusting the resolution your game runs at in the windower script file?

 

[DarkMagnus]

Guess he/she is away for the day. Not knowing what kind of tv and what res he/she set the lap/ffxi at, kinda limits how we can help though. I assume the lap is set to a 16:9 res and maybe the 61" dlp is a 4:3 picture.

 

[asanarama]

Set your laptop so it only displays on the TV, not on both the TV and the laptop screen. Consult the TV's documentation to determine the correct screen resolution. If you run in a Window, don't manually resize it. Give it the right setting in Windower and be sure the "background resolution" as I think it's called in FFXIconfig is set to the same thing. Otherwise you introduce additional scaling, decreasing image quality and possibly reducing performance. That goes for whatever screen you're using. If you need to stretch the window because the interface is too small, you'd somehow want to be sure you *exactly* doubled the height and width for perfect scaling.

 

[FleistLoC]

yah it was the screen resolution

i have my laptop at 1440 x 900
windower at 1280 x 768
and i think my television supports 1280 x 760

i just reduced my windower resolution settings and it's ok now.

regards,

 

[DarkMagnus]

cool.

 

[Laubibent]

i had my desktop hooked up to my plasma 42 tv .. could not get sound to work with it though =\ ... Always wanted to hook laptop to it but my laptop doesnt have a tv thing

 

[DarkMagnus]

You only need vga out (most laptops have this) or s-video out. For sound you can use a mic-jack to rca (left/right), cable.