Trying To Make The Picture Show On My Lcd Tv Using Dvi To Hdmi Cable, Can Someone Help :)?
February 2, 2010 by Rich
Filed under Frequently Asked Questions
Hi i recently purchased a dvi to hdmi cable so I can hook my Toshiba Satellite A305D-S6848 to my 42″ Sanyo lcd tv. My computer is running on Vista and my tv has 3 hdmi inputs. When I hook both of these up correctly dvi to the laptop and hdmi to the tv I get no picture. I’m currently in the display settings on my laptop trying to get it to identify the TV by identifying monitors but I don’t think it’s picking up the TV at all. I’m a little confused and just need some help maybe messing with the settings on my laptop or the TV. I’ll provide a screen shot of what i’m looking at on my laptop at the moment. Any information will help, thank you!
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/4623/73898612kh2.jpg
Your TV is limited to 720p/1080i. Because it cannot display 1080p, connecting a computer/laptop to it via HDMI is not a good idea. (DVD players, cables boxes, etc. work just fine when connected to a TV via HDMI, but computers are different.)
Try this: connect your computer to your TV using the PC-IN terminal instead. Get a VGA-to-VGA cable and connect one end to the PC-IN terminal on your TV and the other end to the VGA-out terminal on your laptop. Your laptop should have a VGA-out terminal, but if it only has a DVI-out, get a DVI-to-VGA adapter.
Oh, and make sure that before you connect it, set the resolution to 1024×768 or less (something your TV can also handle). Then re-up it to whatever you want when you get Windows working (only resolutions than can be displayed by the TV will be available while connected to it).
Cheap cable right here:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10201&cs_id=1020102&p_id=85&seq=1&format=2
OR
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10201&cs_id=1020106&p_id=81&seq=1&format=2
Make sure to get a Male-to-Male one.
And an adapter (assuming you do NOT have a VGA-out):
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10419&cs_id=1041903&p_id=2396&seq=1&format=2
I tried doing exactly what you’ve been trying to do on a 32″ TV of mine that is limited to 720p/1080i. DVI to HDMI didn’t work, but VGA to VGA worked perfectly. (Trust me: it will still look really, really good.)
Best of luck!
Make sure your laptop video is set to 60 Hz. With everything connected, try turning on the TV and selecting that input on the TV, then boot your laptop. You might then need to adjust resolution on your PC to get the best resolution. It might depend what resolutions your HDTV supports.
My Toshiba laptop does not have DVI. When I connect its VGA to my 40″ LCD I think it initially comes up in 800×600, but I can change it on my laptop to the full screen resolution (XP thinks it is 1360×764, but my TV seems to recognize it as its native 1366×768, and it appears sharp).
However, when connecting to a 32″ LG LCD HDTV at a motel, the same laptop would only recognize PC video modes that the TV supported, so the best resolution I could use for its 1366×768 display was 1024×768, which was either pillar boxed with proper aspect ratio or horizonally stretched if displayed full screen.
First thing, make sure that the resolution setting and refresh rate is something that your TV can handle. If your TV is 720p, choose 720×1280 if your TV is 1080p, it should be able to handle 1920×1080 at 60hz.
Next, many TVs do not support HDMI to DVI. Even when they do, it sometimes only supports this for one input. The reason is something called HDCP, a kind of way to protect digital content from being copied. A computer will not output a HDCP compliant signal.
I was looking at a TV the other day on the web, can’t remember the brand, it clearly stated that it would only handle DVI to HDMI over one of its three HDMI inputs.
Try the other two.
If you know that your laptop settings are such that a signal is going out of your DVI, and you have resolution settings that your TV can handle, and you try the other HDMI inputs, and nothing… you are out of luck.