Samsung plasma TV sucks - the workaround Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Some time back I had a rant about the fact that my Sony Vaio wouldn't connect to my new Samsung Plasma TV. This was a problem known by Samsung but not revealed publicly.

Well, evidently this is a problem encountered by lots of folks, as evidenced by the large number of hits this post has received.

Stupidly I forgot to ever publish the workaround solution I came up with. It's not pretty but if you happen to have fallen into the same situation then here's how I have gotten the Vaio to display on the Samsung plasma.

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 Samsung Plasma and the Vaio to this "intermediate" dumb device in "a daisy chain", 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, which was previously inaccessible. 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. It needn't be a Belkin device you use in all likelihood, provided it performs that same sort of function to initially camouflage the Vaio.

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posted by John Wilson @ 4:52 PM Permanent Link newsvine reddit



6 Comments:

At 11:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

i had the same problem AND SONY solved it using a vga cable. I have a vasio and the video card is a mobile inter R 965 chipset family. Go to start control panel, personalization, display settings. then my display settings comes up,then go to advanced settings, and my intel R 965 chipset driver comes up. Now here is where it gets tricky.
Right under the heading it says intel R graphics media acceleraator driver for mobile. there is nothing to indicate that you should click on it but please do. the accelerator comes up and then click on Graphic Properties. On the next screen you'll see where it tells you to use this accelerator that two monitors must be hooked up . go ahead and hook the pc to the tv and then the display will have two selection boxes. the boxs on the left the bottom one must be selected and the two boxes on the right should reflect monitor on top and notebook on the bottom. you may have to us the fn 7 key but by only using a vga cable it comes in great to my samsung 46 inch. Now i only have the headset output on my sony pc and i have not found out what to use to hook up to the tv to get sound from the tv. try it and see if it works and tell the world. sorry for all the words but i'm not a computer geek. jim

 
At 10:44 AM, Blogger John Wilson said...

Thanks for the suggestion. My own vaio [vgn-fs115s] uses a nVidia GE Force Go 6200 video chip. I tried your tip as well as various permutations in the control panel. Sadly I still wasn't able to get the Samsung to recognise a PC source using a VGA lead.

 
At 12:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm currently having the same problem. The vga doesn't solve it. What was the name of the belkin device you used?
Thanks!

 
At 8:19 AM, Blogger John Wilson said...

The Belkin device I use is a "Flip PS/2 Model #F1DF102P"

 
At 1:00 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

My Vaio's and Samsung plasma does the same thing. For some reason my TV will only detect and enable PC mode when the computer is being turned on, or resuing from hibernation. Its weird but it works. I have tested on my Sony SZ and TZ.

1) Hibernate your Sony Notebook and turn on Samsung TV.

2) Connect Sony Notebook and Samsung TV via VGA cable.

3) Power on Sony Notebook, there will be a short window of time where PC mode will be enabled. Try to select PC mode as quickly as possible.

4) Use FN+F7 to select external display, and then adjust display resolution to match TV.

Notes: You won’t be able to switch to any other input modes. If you do, you will have to re-do this whole process.

 
At 12:09 AM, Blogger alexcummings said...

I can't get hold of a belkin cable (shipping to UK over £100) and i've tried using the vga cable whilst hibernating and it doesn't work!!!
Please help!

 

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