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Using My HDTV as a Second Monitor

From Kevin Hoffman's .NET Addicts Blog
By Kevin Hoffman
Article Rating:
May 16, 2008 03:00 PM EDT
Reads:
 8,562

Kevin Hoffman’s Blog

During my last trip to Best Buy, on a whim I picked up a DVI-to-HDMI connector (male DVI, female HDTV). This little doohickey plugs into the side of my Macbook Pro and then I plug the HDMI cable into that. I run the other end of the HDMI cable into the HDTV and I get something that is pretty awesome.

I'm sure all of you techheads and mediaphiles have been doing this for years but I'm generally a little behind the times. I was expecting to get the same experience I get when I plug in a projector, where the projector and the main monitor become synchronized and I see everything really fuzzy on the laptop monitor and clearly on the projector.

I'm not sure if its the default, but the HDTV showed up as a second monitor. I kept my original Macbook Pro 17" desktop resolution of 1680x1050 and the HDTV was using a resolution of 720p (Is that a DVI limitation? I would've assumed it would be 1080i. Is there a setting I can use to tweak the second monitor resolution?).

The whole experience was pretty damn awesome. If I set up a wireless keyboard I should be able to code from all the way across the room and still see the text on the screen quite clearly... but what I suspect I'd like to do is sit on the couch with the Macbook Pro in front of me, and the TV across the room. I line the laptop monitor up so that it shows up below the TV from my foreshortened perspective.

By default, the Mac thinks the external monitor is to the right (if I drag a window to the right, it shows up on the remote monitor). If anybody reading this knows how to make the monitor appear "above" my desktop (I drag a window "up" to the TV) or how to get the DVI to output 1080i (not sure if the Macbook Pro will do that...) that would be awesome.

Right now I'm just poking around with the idea, but I am constantly running out of screen space and I think being able to put the iPhone simulator up on the HDTV while my code is on my laptop monitor in debug mode while I'm stepping from breakpoint to breakpoint would kick ass.

Has anybody else used a configuration like this productively?

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Published May 16, 2008 – Reads 8,562
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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Kevin Hoffman, editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's iPhone Developer's Journal, has been programming since he was 10 and has written everything from DOS shareware to n-tier, enterprise web applications in VB, C++, Delphi, and C. Hoffman is coauthor of Professional .NET Framework (Wrox Press) and co-author with Robert Foster of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed. He authors The .NET Addict's Blog at .NET Developer's Journal.

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Most Recent Comments
zoola 05/18/08 10:40:25 AM EDT

there is new toy out there that allows to broadcats your PC as an HDTV. Check it out zeevee.com . Not out yet but will be on June 30.
kenk 05/18/08 02:33:47 AM EDT

When you open up your displays in the system preferences, you can drag the two displays and change the orientation so that one is above the other instead of side by side.
I chuckle because I read this article on my Sony XBR4 with a MacMini plugged into it, and typed this with the nifty, tiny bluetooth keyboard Apple sells. Welcome to the club!