T40 wont play a dvd on projector

[kohan25]

I have a T40 type 2373-94U Win xp pro as well as many other thinkpads (R50, 51, 60) in my company. For some reason the T40 is the only one that will not play a dvd (real movie or business copy) on either of our 2 new projectors using the vga or s video port. It plays fine on the laptop in windows media player. On the projectors I only get the windows media screen but everything inside is black. I have tried Fn + F7 and changed to all available settings. The other laptops work fine including my older Dell. The T40 has all regular windows updates. I am thinking maybe an IBM update for video is necessary? I would like to try and resolve this quickly as this is the president's laptop that he takes on presentations. Thanks

[SteveS]

Are you sure other T40s can do it? I ran into the same problem with a T43P and other members have reported the same. It turns out that none of the RADEON series GPUs (or possibly the single core Centrino?) used in T4x series can support live video on BOTH the LCD and external monitor at the same time. When you think about it, rendering full video with two independent resolutions is real time requires a huge amount of computing horsepower – probably more than can be dissipated with the limited DC power availability and cooling capability of a laptop computer. Maybe the newer architectures can do it, but it was not possible several years ago when the T4x series was designed.
Looking at Presentation Director, I don’t see an option that provides external monitor ONLY. Even if it were there, I doubt it the GPU has the rendering capability in the second (external) display processor. They really are independent rendering engines, combined on the same chip.

[frankiepankie]

Go to the graphics configuration panel, and look for the "overlay" setting. With the overlay setting correct, you can play video on both screens.

[davidspalding]

I have a T40 type 2373-94U Win xp pro as well as many other thinkpads (R50, 51, 60) in my company. For some reason the T40 is the only one that will not play a dvd (real movie or business copy) on either of our 2 new projectors using the vga or s video port. It plays fine on the laptop in windows media player.

Now, are you working with a mirrored display, or extending the desktp and dragging the WMP over to the 2nd (projector) monitor? I've only ever played video on a HDTV via S-video and DVI out by putting WMP on the 2nd (external) display.

[kohan25]

My T40 was purchased in 04 so I guess it is old and makes sense that it wont do both. It has the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics with 32mb video ram. I am going to try and play with the settings to see if I can get only the projector to present the image. I dont have any other T40's but my R50's have no problem with both and all computers can do powerpoint, etc. on both. I am not an expert in the graphics part of the computer but was surprised that my Dell Inspiron 5100 could do both and that is older. I guess back when we bought the T40 it was good for its time but and I guess we never thought about playing a dvd on a projector. We only used it for powerpoint.

[chan_man]

Get the latest Presentation Director from Lenovo, when it is loaded, start it up, go to the setting for "Presentation on Projector", then pick EDIT. on the next window, you will see a tab marked DISPLAY, at the bottom is a setting called: Primary Display Device for Movie Playback, select External Monitor or Projector. This is the way my T42P works and it shows movies on the projector just fine.