connecting laptop via hdmi cable to lcd tv

[simonlang]

i connected my laptop via hdmi cable to my lcd tv yesterday.

the plan was to make it easier watching .mkv files. i played those files with vlc player and cloned the image from laptop lid to the lcd tv.

have a small problem tho, while its playing perfectly and the picture quality is really amazing, about every 10 seconds or so the picture stopps for between 0.5s and 1second. that makes watching a movie not nice at all.

the notebook is a acer ferrari 5000, so the specs should be fine, any ideas and help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

[kazuyette]

2 things I would do :

- only use the external display ( in your case, only the LCD tv)

- I'll use media player classic + CCCP for playing .mkv files as in my experience, VLC is not really efficient when playing .mkv files.

Whqt are the specs of your laptop and what kind of .mkv are youtrying to play ? 720p or 1080p ?

[+StevoFC MVC]

don't clone the image, either extend the desktop or only use the external display.

[simonlang]

yep i didnt duplicate the image, i had it only shown on the lcd.

it works a bit better with media player classic, the picture is not as laggy as b4 anymore but still a little bit. (whats CCCP?)

the specs of my lap are:

amd turion 64 x2 mobile tl60 2.00ghz

2gb ram

ati mobility radeon x1600 256mb

running windows 7 build build 7068

and is it normal that audio cant be streamed via hdmi? (i thought hdmi was for picture and sound - wrong?)

i tried to play a 1080p mkv file. do you think 720p would make bit difference? (i.e. running much more fluently)

[simonlang]

dont want to sound impatient but ... anyone?

[capr]

hdmi is sound and video but most video cards only give out video as they are video cards... if you buy hd video cards they often have a sound card on board that will render the sound and send it through hdmi. right now you basically have a DVI out but in hdmi cable form.

as for your problem with the lag, does it happen when you try to play other media files? youtube videos? even games? or is it just this particular file type that messes with things.

open up task manager and keep an eye on your processes see if anything spikes when the lag happens.

[simonlang]

its only with mkv files. i tried avi files and they have less bitrate (obviously the mkv file is over 8 GB filesize, while the avi files for the same duration about 2hours is max 1 or 1.5 gb big), everything works fine.

but, please, there should be a way to play mkv files that way i want (and as you can see by my notebook specs its not a low end nb).

tried the taskman thing already, everything as it should - and i have set the energy-plan of my notebook to "high performance" already, no unnecesary processes are running, all i get sometimes is that the mplayer or vlc.exe gets from 50 or 60% of cpu usage to 100% - thats where it causes the lag obviously.

[Guest sendmarksmail]

Try updating your videocard driver. It could just be that your running Windows 7. Does it run fine on Vista? Maybe that's the case.

I do the same as you do, I play .mkv files from my laptop to HDTV via HDMI and I get sound and picture. My videocard is an Nvidia, but it shouldn't matter. ALL HDMI's should carry sound and video.

[kazuyette]

yep i didnt duplicate the image, i had it only shown on the lcd.

it works a bit better with media player classic, the picture is not as laggy as b4 anymore but still a little bit. (whats CCCP?)

the specs of my lap are:

amd turion 64 x2 mobile tl60 2.00ghz

2gb ram

ati mobility radeon x1600 256mb

running windows 7 build build 7068

and is it normal that audio cant be streamed via hdmi? (i thought hdmi was for picture and sound - wrong?)

i tried to play a 1080p mkv file. do you think 720p would make bit difference? (i.e. running much more fluently)

according to your specs and the file you're trying to read ( 1080p) your laptop is not powerful enough to play a 1080p file. Stay with 720p max and you'll be alright mate.

regarding your problem about the audio not playing , try what others have suggested : updating drivers and installing CCCP ( Community Combined Codec Pack : best codec pack out there ) and come back here to tell us the results.

[simonlang]

updating my graphic card driver fails.

on the ati website it says that amd/ati is currently not supporting the mobility radeon catalyst.

google is no help either all i can find are some old drivers for windows 2000 / xp or some links to shittorrent.

cccp is installed now and a 720p file seems to play lag-free. :)

but as long as i dont get any sound over hdmi its useless, simply useless.

anyone can find me a link to the latest driver for my graphic card? thanks.

[Olemus]

Laptop drivers are released by the manufacturer of your laptop.

Manufacturers Website

[simonlang]

done. still no sound over hdmi. (might it be that its because i havent installed the sound-driver for my soundchip but only the default one which came with windows 7?)

there are a few hdmi specific settings in the driver of my graphic card now, maybe i ve overseen the right one?

posting this now from my laptop and using the lcd tv as main-screen. thats amazing :D

a thing i noticed: earlier the hdmi cable was not 100% properly connected with my laptop. it was plugged in but not deep ennough; actually it needs quite a lot of force ot get plugged in 100%, might that one have caused the laggy video playing? stupid as i am i have deleted the 1080p mkv file already, so i cant verify it, the 720p works fine right now.

still the sound problem stays. im open for any ideas.

[Olemus]

You wont be able to get sound from your video cards HDMI port it simply doesnt support it. The only thing you can do is get an adapter which connects to the headphone jack on your laptop.

[simonlang]

problem solved!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

it was shocking how easy it was. actually there was no need to waste time with driver installations, windows 7 default graphic card driver would have been ennough.

no additional drivers needed, it was just a very simple setting in the control panel!

default setting was "speakers", now whenever i want to connect the notebook via hdmi cable on my lcd tv all i have to do is making the realtek digital audio output set to DEFAULT;

thats it; can be done in less than 1 minute. you just have to know it. :)

hope it helps for others too.

thank you all.

[DaDude]

i connected my laptop via hdmi cable to my lcd tv yesterday.

the plan was to make it easier watching .mkv files. i played those files with vlc player and cloned the image from laptop lid to the lcd tv.

have a small problem tho, while its playing perfectly and the picture quality is really amazing, about every 10 seconds or so the picture stopps for between 0.5s and 1second. that makes watching a movie not nice at all.

the notebook is a acer ferrari 5000, so the specs should be fine, any ideas and help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

I actually just got a new laptop last week. I wanted a VGA cable so I can hook it up to my LCD TV and also watch some video files on my TV, since my TV has a PC input. I tried buying the cable from Ebay, since it was only $6 there, but it ended up being a piece of junk. My TV wouldn't work with it. When I borrowed the VGA cable from my PC, it worked perfectly fine on my LCD TV. But the one from Ebay didn't work. When I tried swapping cables and I tried using the cable I got from Ebay on my PC, it wouldn't support my monitor's 1440x900 resolution. I never knew that certain VGA cables have issues at certain resolutions. I would've tried hooking it up via HDMI like you did, but I don't want to use up an HDMI port. My TV has a VGA port, so I might as well get some good use out of it. Oh well, off I go to do more VGA cable shopping.

and is it normal that audio cant be streamed via hdmi? (i thought hdmi was for picture and sound - wrong?)

Not when you hook a PC up. Usually on most TVs, one of their HDMI ports has a red and white audio port next to it. I know my TV has it. Check if yours has it. Once you find that out, you'll need a special cable (one that has the headphone plug on one end and the red and yellow audio plugs on the other).

Edited April 14, 2009 by xraffle

[simonlang]

I actually just got a new laptop last week. I wanted a VGA cable so I can hook it up to my LCD TV and also watch some video files on my TV, since my TV has a PC input. I tried buying the cable from Ebay, since it was only $6 there, but it ended up being a piece of junk. My TV wouldn't work with it. When I borrowed the VGA cable from my PC, it worked perfectly fine on my LCD TV. But the one from Ebay didn't work. When I tried swapping cables and I tried using the cable I got from Ebay on my PC, it wouldn't support my monitor's 1440x900 resolution. I never knew that certain VGA cables have issues at certain resolutions. I would've tried hooking it up via HDMI like you did, but I don't want to use up an HDMI port. My TV has a VGA port, so I might as well get some good use out of it. Oh well, off I go to do more VGA cable shopping.

oh man that sounds like you had some badluck with the cable (i never knew that about vga cables only supporting certain resolutions i thought it was as standard)

in your case id take it as a hint and go for the hdmi cable. my tv has 3 hdmi ports but even if u have only 1 use it. you can always buy a splitter if needed more hdmi ports later.

Not when you hook a PC up. Usually on most TVs, one of their HDMI ports has a red and white audio port next to it. I

know my TV has it. Check if yours has it. Once you find that out, you'll need a special cable (one that has the

headphone plug on one end and the red and yellow audio plugs on the other).

thanks ill check that despite its not really needed anymore since i now get sound directly over hdmi as described in my posting above ;)

[simonlang]

i shouldnt try to answer over my iphone anymore :laugh:

or is there a way to mark text and use the quote function with the iphone?

I actually just got a new laptop last week. I wanted a VGA cable so I can hook it up to my LCD TV and also watch some video files on my TV, since my TV has a PC input. I tried buying the cable from Ebay, since it was only $6 there, but it ended up being a piece of junk. My TV wouldn't work with it. When I borrowed the VGA cable from my PC, it worked perfectly fine on my LCD TV. But the one from Ebay didn't work. When I tried swapping cables and I tried using the cable I got from Ebay on my PC, it wouldn't support my monitor's 1440x900 resolution. I never knew that certain VGA cables have issues at certain resolutions. I would've tried hooking it up via HDMI like you did, but I don't want to use up an HDMI port. My TV has a VGA port, so I might as well get some good use out of it. Oh well, off I go to do more VGA cable shopping.

oh man that sounds like you had some badluck with the cable (i never knew that about vga cables only supporting certain resolutions i thought it was as standard)

in your case id take it as a hint and go for the hdmi cable. my tv has 3 hdmi ports but even if u have only 1 use it. you can always buy a splitter if needed more hdmi ports later.

Not when you hook a PC up. Usually on most TVs, one of their HDMI ports has a red and white audio port next to it. I

know my TV has it. Check if yours has it. Once you find that out, you'll need a special cable (one that has the

headphone plug on one end and the red and yellow audio plugs on the other).

thanks ill check that despite its not really needed anymore since i now get sound directly over hdmi as described in my posting above

[DaDude]

oh man that sounds like you had some badluck with the cable (i never knew that about vga cables only supporting certain resolutions i thought it was as standard)

I don't know what happened either. I should try Yahoo Answering this and see what answers I get from people. I thought all VGA cables were the same. I mean, I've bought a couple of cheap Component and HDMI cables from Ebay and they all work great. I thought I would get the same results from VGA cables.