What's new
Pinball info

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Using a laptop with hdtv - help pls

DRD

Registered
Joined
Oct 26, 2014
Messages
5,421
Location
Newark
'Er indoors has a 6m old 500 quid laptop running the latest windows whatever operating system and Microsoft office . It has a 1080 screen and is quite a good spec machine .

I have tried to set hey up with a monitor, keyboard, proper mouse to give a better working position.

So I connected the laptop to a 6 year old Samsung 1080 hdtv, probably about 22 inch using a hdmi cable as her laptop has very few sockets as it is a skinny one.

If you view a hdtv film on YouTube, it plays perfectly on the external TV monitor so I know that the graphics card, TV, laptop and hdmi are all working .

BUT when you use the laptop as a computer for say word or excel, the image quality on the external screen is crap- it is perfect on the inbuilt screen. The text looks like the resolution in windows needs changing for it to work properly on the larger, external screen

Does anyone know how to fix this pls?

Thanks .
 
If there are settings for it on the TV, try adjusting the image sharpness, typically it'll want to be turned down.

My desktop PC is connected to a 32" Samsung TV and it took a bit of tweaking to get normal text to look good on it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DRD
You may have scaling enabled which would make the text and other stuff look bigger then it normally would. You can change this by Right clicking on the desktop and choosing "Display Settings," you'll want this at 100%. It will also be worth checking that the laptop is outputing a 1080p (1920x1080) signal while you are there and that any available on the TV itself are optimised for PC use. Things like overscan and image processing etc are all best switched off. There's nothing wrong with using HDMI to connect the two as electronically the image side of things is exactly the same as the DVI connections you are likely used to.

You may well find that text and office apps will never look as good on a television as they would on a conventional computer monitor though as most TV panels are manufactured slightly differently with a different sub pixel arrangement which leads to blurry text etc.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: DRD
You may also have "Screen resolution" when you right-click the desktop. It will be easier to mess with the TV resolution if you are extending the display rather than cloning, although both ought to be OK at 1920x1080.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DRD
Tvs are basically crap for displaying computer graphics (especially text) as said above you can adjust the laptops output and the tvs settings but you wont get a monitor output from a tv (which is one of the reasons a 30" tv cost buttons compared to a 30" monitor ~£100 compared to ~£1000 ) Dont get me wrong if you tweak your settings etc you will get a decent picture, just not a great picture.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DRD
Back
Top Bottom