What's needed for pc to tv connection?

[t600]

Hey guys I have a Gateway m-6862 laptop that i'm trying to get hooked up to a Sony KV-40XBR800 tv. The problem is that there is an HDMI port on the laptop and the tv doesn't have one. The tv does have a DVI input so I just bought a cable thats hdmi on one end and dvi on the other. It didn't work (pc recognized it as a Sony tv but that's it.) I didn't realize that dvi doesn't include sound so even if the cord deal worked I wouldn't have any sound. My question is that I see you can buy a cord that is hdmi on one end and component cables on the other. Would this work? I also saw converters and switches and am confused now on what exactly I need to make this work. I use the laptop with the flat-screen tv in the living room all the time that has an hdmi port on it and it works great, so I know the pc aspect is working fine. Thanks for any help you guys can give.

[mattaggie]

That cable you bought should work. Make sure that your laptop display settings arent set too high for the TV to display. Set the laptop to 720 and see if that makes a difference. Also, you may need to go into the display settings and tell the laptop that you are changing displays.

[t600]

When looking at the manual the description for the dvi port says --- can accomodate a copy-protected digital connection (HDCP) to other devices (such as digital set-top boxes) than have compatible interfaces. The DVI-HDTV input terminal is compliant with the EIA-861 standard and is not intended for use with personal computers.

I'm not sure if "not intended" means that it can't be done. With it being a laptop the hdmi output is all that I have so with the dvi cable I still wouldn't have any sound to the tv. I would most like an hdmi to component setup so that I can have sound

[Hi Ho]

First off, have fun moving that beast. I've moved my fair share of them and It's not fun.

Getting to the question; have you tried various resolution settings in the laptop? That TV should support a 720p signal from the laptop. It shouldn't matter whether it's coming from a laptop, a Blu-Ray player, or any other device.

All you need to do for sound is use a cable like THIS. Plug on end into the headphone jack on the laptop and the other into the DVI audio input on the TV (should be two RCA jacks close to the DVI port).

[t600]

Thanks for the reply Hi Ho. You are dead on it with having to move this tv. My dad evicted a renter and the renter couldn't get anyone to help him move the tv so he left it. Dad told me If I would get it out of his house then I could have it....that being said the weight of the tv was a plus in my situation. I'm curious now if maybe I got a bad cable. I'm using the Catalyst Control Center with the ati card in my laptop and it shows the 2nd display as "Sony TV" and shows it cloned and everything looks right. The tv supports up to 1080i and i've tried everything that it shows in the software from 720p to the 1080i and the different variants that it shows. Could the cable be bad if the laptop is able to identify it as "Sony TV"? My buddy and I just about killed ourselves getting this 300 lb tv upstairs with the sole purpose of connecting it to my laptop for streaming stuff from my server computer. I'm thinking its either the cable or a setting in the tv that I havent found.

[glc]

I have a very stupid question - does the TV work?

[t600]

HAHAHA.....yes the tv plays very well. I have a blu-ray player and satellite both coming through the component cable hookups and it seems to have a better picture than our Sharp Aquos LCD. The sound is amazing. Everything is fine just can't figure out the darn DVI problem.

[glc]

I hope you understand why I had to ask that...........

Set the display in the video driver to 1366x768 or lower, and make sure it's 60 Hz. Cycle through the inputs on the TV.

[t600]

I wanted to thank everyone for helping me....I finally figured out the problem. I realized tonight that when I was switching through the inputs on the tv that there was more physical inputs on the back of the tv than there was inputs cycling on the tv. Finally after looking through all the menus I saw that there were 2 inputs that were labeled skip and when cycled they were just jumped. Of course one of the two was the DVI input that I was trying to use and after I gave it a name the tv no longer skipped that input. I was so happy to finally get this figured out. I haven't had time to play with the settings yet but I will tomorrow.....it's not a very sharp picture. I'm also having issues with the laptop being widescreen and not 4:3 like the tv so the screen is squished a ton. I'm still thrilled and I know that I will get the kinks worked out, am kinda disappointed that I didn't figure this out sooner.....in my defense though the input I was using must have had the name changed on it because the name was right, just the input associated with it was wrong. Thanks again