On 2012-12-01, Grant wrote: >> > I've connected my laptop to a lot of HDTV's and whenever I switch >> > the output to display on both screens, black bars appear on the >> > left and right of my laptop screen so it displays at 4:3, and the >> > HDTV output is 16:9 but looks horizontally stretched. Does >> > anyone know how to keep the output at 16:9 on both screens? >> > >> > - Grant >> >> You don't give a lot of information here. Are you using mirrored >> screen or an extended desktop? Also what is the desktop environment or >> window manager you use? >> >> On thing that might help is to provide the output of xrandr. > > I'm using xfce4, but I'm not sure if I'm using a mirrored screen or an > extended desktop. All I do is plug the laptop into the HDTV with an HDMI > cable and hit the keyboard shortcut to switch screens which brings up a > little dialog.
There is nothing too complex here, if the TV and laptop are showing the same thing, one screen is *mirroring* the other, otherwise, if you see different things in different screens, you're using an extended desktop. > I was able to change the resolution from 1024x768 to 1366x768 with xfce4's > Display settings, but when I disconnect and reconnect to the HDTV it > displays at 1024x768 again. Do you know how to select the output > resolution for an external screen permanently? Is this done in > xorg.conf? This is, I'd guess, a "preferred" video mode announced through EDID, where the TV, even if it supports 1366x768, will anounce 1024x768 as preferred. You could do the change with a small xrandr one-liner, and there must be some way to do it through xorg.conf, although I don't know how. In the end, having the output of xrandr (both before and after you change the video modes) would help *a lot*, as it answers most of our questions... -- Nuno Silva (aka njsg) http://njsg.sdf-eu.org/
