[mythtv-users] Laptop Video out?

[Andrew Bassett]

>
>> Tony,
>>
>> I think you mis-understood what I meant(or more likely I wrote a  
>> crappy
>> question). The part about the LCD was just saying I have the frontend
>> running on PC connected to an LCD monitor and I like it a lot.
>>
>> So I'd like to use mythfrontend in my main viewing area just to try it
>> out for a while. BUT, dealing with TVOut can be a big hassle unless  
>> you
>> go out and buy stuff you know works, like nvidia cards people have
>> working.
>>     
> That hasn't been my experience, actually. When it comes to laptops,  
> they don't give you a lot of choices for what you can have inside of  
> it. And, unless the TV-Out is a separate adapter, it should "Just  
> Work®" Like I said, with my iBook, the experience has been: plug it  
> in, and it works. It was the same experience for an old teacher of  
> mine, and his HP laptop, and parishioner at the church I go to. My  
> personal opinion is that you're over thinking this. Just plug it in,  
> and see what it does. The TV-Out on most adapters just mirror the  
> output from the VGA port, and it's always on.
>   

I just tried using my laptop as a remote frontend, but things didn't 
"Just Work". However, by adding the standard svideo stuff to my xorg.conf:

Option      "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
Option      "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
Option      "ConnectedMonitor" "TV"

Things work fine on the TV. The quality is actually quite excellent. 
However, my laptop screen went blank, which if I remember correctly is 
what it's supposed to do. I googled around and found a doc for ubuntu 
[http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/NvidiaTvOut] to have 2 screens next to 
each other, but I would prefer to see the exact same image on both 
screens. Is this something that is even possible?

Current Hardware:
Dell Inspiron 8200
P4 1.6 Ghz
512 MB Ram
Nvidia Geforce 440 [64MB]


Thanks,

Andrew Bassett
andrew at abassett.org