Streaming video to widescreen TV/monitor

[raueda1]

After fiddling around various T4x's, a 2878 docking station and Hitachi HDTV ("mon_2") I'm almost ready to pull the plug on cable TV. The docking station and TV are linked by DVI cable. Result are amazingly good, close to DVD quality on most material and vastly better than s-video and standard def TV. I'm mostly watching Hulu and Netflix "watch instantly" programming.

I've settled on a garden variety T40 or T42 for my streaming source. I messed around with a UXGA T42p, but getting resolutions right was too complicated. Here are the questions:

First, I'm a little puzzled by the multiple monitor setup and how it seems to handle streaming video off the web. I can extend the desktop to Mon_2 just fine. When I click "full screen" on the Hulu or netfix pages it seems to know what aspect ratio to use on Mon_2 and it fills the screen and aspect ration correctly regardless of the resolution set on the Mon_2. I'm not complaining, it just seems weird. In fact, it isn't necessary to completely drag the browser window from the main screen (T42) to Mon_2. How does the browser know how to override the TV's resolution?

Second, I seems to have to go into control panel/display/advanced/displays to turn on Mon_2 every time I want to watch. Is there some way to make the system remember the settings? I don't mind the fiddling but my wife hates it! Thx,

[basketb]

I use presentation director to set up different display setups. It can be set up so that a certain display profile is applied automatically whenever you dock your machine. Otherwise, it's only a single click to apply a given profile (as opposed to fiddling with the display control panel).

[raueda1]

I use presentation director to set up different display setups. It can be set up so that a certain display profile is applied automatically whenever you dock your machine. Otherwise, it's only a single click to apply a given profile (as opposed to fiddling with the display control panel).

thanks for the suggestion. i haven't tried it, in part cause my Presentation director is broken. I posted about that sepeerately to keep from hijacking my own thread.

[sjthinkpader]

TV HDMI inputs use overscan and almost every TV is different. So it is very hard to get the resolution right. Some TVs such as Viewsonic provide a monitor driver. DVI inputs does not use overscan so it is pretty easy. I was told Windows XP Media Center Edition has functions to deal with overscan but haven't tried it yet.

There is a manual adjustment software called Powerstrip but I had no success in getting it to work yet. PD doesn't list TV resolutions so it is no help. My Phillips 720p TV has native 1366x768 resolution. I simple set resolution on my A31p to 1280x720 and switch over to external. Connection is by dock plus DVI-HDMI cable. TV image has a border cut off but works well enough.

I do it this way instead of dual displays because the XnView software used for slide shows doesn't run on monitor 2. So I switch between LCD and TV with a single monitor setup. I had on occasion use the Thinkpad DVD drive to play DVD movies when all else failed. Connection to my home network is actually by 802.11n wireless.