Using a Laptop as DVD Player. (1 Viewer)

[Martin Fontaine]

My dad recently bought a Compaq Presario Laptop which he mainly uses at work and on the road but brings it home too. The machine has a DVD Drive in it, a video card with a S-Video out and today we tested and it worked.

But the TV he has it connected to (Sony Wega 27") is 16x9 Squeeze capable and we'd like to know if there is a way to set it so that it sends the signal to his TV telling it to do the anamorphic squeeze.

He's using WinDVD to watch his movies. I know the video card in the laptop is a ATI Radeon 7500.

Any ways to make use of the TV's 16x9 Squueze option?

 

[Matt DeVillier]

most likely the TV-out is limited to a few resolutions like 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. If you can force the TV-out to output your desktop resoltion, set your destop resolution to one with a 16x9 aspect ratio (848x480 or 960x540 - use powerstrip if needed) and that should do the trick. If you're going to do any substantial dvd watching I'd recommend a dedicated set top player though, because even a $50 set top player will look better than your laptop's s-video out.

 

[Martin Fontaine]

It's not for me. I'm using a good ol' Sony DVP-S360.

Yes, the TV Out is limited to 1024x768 and at one point when we were testing the connection to the TV, he was worried that I screwed up something and that he'd be stuck in that res forever! He was so happy that his 15" Laptop screen could go as high as 1400x1050 while many of his co-workers (With Laptops twice the price of his) are stuck at 1024x768 so losing that would have been hard!

He doesn't have any 16x9 resolutions in his display settings. What's Powerstrip?

As for using a set top DVD Player, he was considering a Panasonic RV-32 at one point but decided to save up for a PDR instead. Since he bought the laptop for work/road the fact that he could use it to watch DVDs by bringing it into the living room is just a plus for him, if he already has a DVD Player (His Laptop) he sees no point in getting a set top box now. And picture quality is not important for him, being able to use the 16x9 squeeze is my idea as if it wasn't for me, he wouldn't even know his TV could do that!

 

[Bill Slack]

It's being outputted via S-Video, so changing the desktop resolution likely won't work.

If you can get the siginal on WinDVD (or some other software player, if it can't) to display stretched on the laptop, in full-screen mode, it can then be squeezed on the TV.