DVD playback

[wedor]

I picked up a new Dell laptop for a client and it works great, he wanted a DVD player and now wants to play DVD's through the laptop onto his big screen TV. It plays DVD fine on the laptop and when the system is connected to the TV it displays the desktop on the TV fine but when playing back a DVD the TV screen goes black. I have little experience with this and don't know if he's just trying to do the impossible or if I am overlooking something. It's an Inspiron 8100, PIII 1000, 256megs RAM, GeForce2, etc... I forget the brand of DVD software.

[cobra]

hmmm
Try switching the video source on the laptop,
function key and (something else),
look on Dell website. sorry I was not much help.

[wedor]

I know what you mean (Ican't remember the exact keys either) and I tried that the last time I was over there, no go, any other ideas?

[BeardedClem]

I can't gaurantee this will work for the geforce 2 go in there because I have a radeon8500 but try this:

In the desktop properties box, under the settings tab, click the advanced button.

in there you should find tabs for opengl and direct3d and somewhere in there, there should be a displays tab that controls the video out function.

On my computer, theres a button in there that lets you either exactly clone your desktop on the tv or use it as a primary display.

If the first is clicked, the desktop will be cloned just fine but a DVD will not display the video, just sound and a black screen, setting tv to primary fixes it.

Hope that helps.

[wedor]

Thanks, I'll have to give it a try.