Using My HDTV as a Second Monitor

From Kevin Hoffman's .NET Addicts Blog

May. 16, 2008 03:00 PM

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?

links: digg this del.icio.us technorati reddit

Published May. 16, 2008— Reads 7,430 — Feedback 2
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.

About Kevin Hoffman
Kevin Hoffman, editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's iPhone Developer's Journal, is Technical Chair of iPhone Developer Summit. He 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.

WEB 2.0 LATEST NEWS

SOA World Expo: Enterprise Mashup Services

By Ric Smith

Since Web 2.0 kicked off scarcely a day goes by without a headline targeting mashups and their enablers, AJAX and Web Services, as the next hot Web technologies. Mashups are Web sites that integrate a variety of services (e.g., news feeds, weather reports, maps, and traffic conditions)...

Keynote Systems Exec Foresees Web Apps Being Built in the Cloud

By Jeremy Geelan

In this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan of SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal, Rajeev Kutty of Keynote Systems speaks of the factors currently driving companies to increase their effort in monitoring the performance of their Web and mobile applications, and about how Keynote foresees a...

Web 2.0 Is Dead And It's Time To Get Out Of This Mess!

By Web 2.0 News Desk

Industry blogger Alex Bunardzic writes in his 'Ethical Software by Alex Bunardzic' blog: 'Now that Microsoft has jumped onto the web 2.0 bandwagon, it is more than obvious that Web 2.0 is dead as a doornail. Everyone knows by now that anything Microsoft touches turns into this big slim...

AJAX World RIA Interview: Convergence of Web, Mobile and Desktop Apps is the Next Phase

By Jeremy Geelan

'While the last decade was focused on the Web, the next phase in the evolution of our industry will be on the convergence of Web, mobile and desktop applications and the ability to extend existing applications with these new technologies for a consistent user experience regardless of h...

RIA Conference Keynotes: Adobe & Microsoft

By Jeremy Geelan

Join Scott Guthrie as he discusses Microsoft’s commitment to web standards development, Rich Internet Applications and how Microsoft is contributing to help move the web forward. Join Adobe’s Kevin Lynch as he demonstrates how Flash and HTML come together to make the most engaging,...