Samsung plasma TV sucks Saturday, May 12, 2007

I recently bought a Samsung Plasma HDTV and planned to hook it up to my Sony Vaio. However, it took me a little while to get round to buying the monitor lead and also a wireless keyboard. But finally I did it this week and was a "boy with toys" hooking it all up.

So I imagine my frustration when no matter what I did, I couldn't get the plasma to recognise the laptop was connected (the Vaio correctly recognised the plasma).

In the end I rang up the Samsung helpline and explained the problem. So imagine my initial astonishment & then anger, when their first question was "is it a Vaio, because they don't work with our screens?" Huh! Where was this nugget available to forewarn people before buying a Samsung - "no, its not published anywhere on out website & there's no way to fix it". And how long has this little gem been known - oh, about a year!

So if you happen to have a Vaio and want to link it to a big screen, don't buy a Samsung Plasma TV.

Likewise if you have a Samsung plasma TV, you may want to rule out a Vaio.

Cross - you bet I am.

UPDATE:
Apologies, but I forgot to publish a workaround solution to this. It's not pretty but if you happen to have fallen into the same situation then here's how I have got the Vaio to display on the Samsung plasma for inexplicable reasons.

A chance comment that a friend made to me about "tricking" the plasma prompted me to take a chance and buy a Belkin device which is designed to connect several computers to single screen which can then be alternated between. To make the whole thing work, this is what I do:

1. Connect the plasma and the vaio to this "intermediate" dumb device, the former with a monitor cable and the latter with the Belkin device cable.

2. On your vaio, activate the external monitor output (on my keyboard this is achieved with Fn+f7 buttons). At this point the Samsung plasma recognises that a PC is attempting to connect to it and activates the PC source. However, it reports on screen that you need to check the signal.

3. Disconnect both the plasma and the vaio from the Belkin device and connect the plasma directly to the vaio. Voila, your vaio screen is now visible on the Samsung plasma screen.

It seems crazy, but it works for reasons I don't care about.

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posted by John Wilson @ 10:37 AM Permanent Link newsvine reddit



4 Comments:

At 11:36 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks heaps for the info mate.

 
At 3:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

have a guess what ive spent the last hour trying to do......

 
At 12:12 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

a massive thanks for the info.. this was driving me nuts last night ... will try this beklin thing out tonight

 
At 6:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Been trying to hook up the Viao to the Samsung Plasma for about 4 hours, thought "I" was doing something wrong! Thanks for the heads up.

 

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