Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

DVI passes through video only.
HDMI passes through video AND sound (provided it's a direct HDMI to HDMI connection). Unfortunately, Dell's display port to HDMI adapter does not guarantee to pass through both sound and video. It's not consistent across monitors- i.e. some monitors it apparently works for and some it doesn't, also confirmed through Dell and after reading several bulletin posts, and doing my own testing and realizing sound doesn't pass through on MY brand new Samsung HDTV.

As far as quality goes between DVI and HDMI, I am not sure. I would recommend doing the DVI based on my poor experience with the display port to HDMI adapter. On the other hand, the Display Port to DVI adapter with a LCD MONITOR (not TV) seems to work like a charm and automatically recognize when it's plugged in and saves your previous options/configuration to either display just on the monitor or just on the laptop or display clone (both on).

 

It makes no sense.
It is normal that your TV recognize VGA as PC... as well... it's like the ONLY device that uses this medium. It's not hard. My guess is your TV doesn't support PC via HDMI. Some TV does, some don't. BUT, if you TV support PC, then signal that the video card sends to say "I am a PC" might not be supported by your TV. I have a similar issue with my CRT Sony TV, about wide screen support via composite. My Wii wide screen signal is not being understood on my TV (so, I manually need to tell the TV to be in wide-screen 16:9 and not 4:3), but my DVD player does the job, and my TV auto-switch to wide-screen. I know the newer model of my CRT screen does not have this issue (well CRT's are not made anymore by Sony). As TV's are now digital, it's technically possible to support firmware updates... check for that.

It does not make sense that the audio works in some scenarios. It's either works or does not. If you are correct, please provide details as it really sounds fishy.

 

No, My TV DOES support PC via HDMI, it just doesn't recognize the laptop when hooked up with display port to hdmi. What's even more bizarre is that it doesn't pass through the sound. I don't know the technical explanations of why it doesn't work or why it does work. What I'm saying is based on my own experience, discussions with Samsung, Dell, and viewing numerous posts about this topic of the Display Port to HDMI adapter. Do a search and you will see several entries about this, I don't want to beat a dead horse as it's already been over-discussed in other posts.

 

Your "all 3 reps at each company" are wrong. I have connected my E6400 (Intel graphics) to the Samsung 40" 750 series LCD HDTV. At soon as the HDMI connection is made, the resolutions on both the LCD and the TV reset to 1360x768/60 Hz. Previously the laptop screen was at 1440x900. That is the closest setting for both TV's, and it is in "Duplicate Display" mode, otherwise known as cloning. I then can go into the Display settings, and select Monitor 2 (HDTV) only, and set it to 1920x1080/60. Perfectly good 1:1 pixel mapping. If you PM me, I can send you photos of the HDTV showing the resolutions. The important thing to note is that the display information is being sent from the Samsung HDTV to the E6400, so that the latter can decide which resolutions are available.

Of course, no one implied that you were an idiot, but sometimes the so-called technical support help at Samsung are idiots. I have dealt with them many times. The people at Dell are more knowledgeable, but they don't really want to do research for you on what HDTV's can do.

You didn't specify the monitor model, so it could happen that your TV is not sending the monitor info over. Look at Display Properties, and the properties of the external monitor. It should tell you what resolutions are available, therefore showing that the correct info is being sent across the HDMI/Display Port.

Did you catch what I said about "Just Scan" and "1-to-1 pixel mapping" which are picture modes on your TV? And that by labelling the HDMI input as "PC", it removes most of the signal processing like overscan?

BTW, I have Windows 7 now, and the DisplayPort-to-HDMI adaptor is the one labelled by Dell. I am 100% sure that Vista works the same way.

 

That's certainly not true with Dell's DP/HDMI adaptor and the current Samsung LCD HDTV's. When I connect my E6400 to the HDMI port of the Samsung LCD TV via the Dell DP adaptor, sound output on the E6400 automatically switches over to the HDMI Device. Multichannel sound is sent out. Latest Audio Driver from Dell installed.

DP, DVI and HDMI have IDENTICAL video quality. These are digital signals.

 

Hmmm, this isn't good. I installed a 2 Gig stick of Transcend RAM that should work with the E6400. It's working so far, until today when I tried to play some Empire: Total War, it bluescreened. I restarted and it kept bluescreening for a bit but Vista started up again after a few of them. So, the issue really only comes up when trying to play Empire: Total War?

Stop 0x000000A is the error code I'm getting. I'm pretty sure this is being caused by the extra stick of RAM since that's the only thing that has changed. In addition, HL2 (TF2) randomly starts to crash now as well, though it won't bluescreen.

 

My experience as well with a 2008 Sony Bravia W model. I love it.

I can't imagine an HDTV not accepting a signal on HDMI from this laptop. I mean it's outputting 1080p or 720p ... pretty much industry standard.

I have had much more problems trying to get the display correct (overscanning and stuff) on VGA.

 

Ugh, I just got another error code when trying to get Steam to download GTA4... 0x0000000c5 !? Why are all these errors revolving around Steam and Games!?

Wait, just got another bluescreen unrelated to Steam. It happened when I was using Windows Live Mail...It happened too fast for me to get the error code. What the hell is going on there? I'm going to go run a memtest.

 

very weird, not sure why mine doesn't work properly?
Samsung 40" LCD HDTV 1080i LN-S4051D

Mine too is 1366x768 and my laptop is 1440x900 resolution.

Would love to find out why it doesn't work on mine! The video sends through but no sound, and it doesn't recognize it as a PC and the screen resolution goes down on the laptop upon plugging it in with the display-hdmi adapter. In the graphics options and in display options of laptop I can only select the default resolution and it doesn't allow me to move it or snap it to 1366x768.
The analog however works flawlessly. I confirmed with Samsung that my model supports PC recognition and to their knowledge it should pass through sound and video and allow me more options to match resolution...
If you know a solution I would love to hear it so I can try it out.

Also, yea I read about the just scan and 1 to 1 pixel mapping, I tried all the available modes of dual clone, just laptop, just monitor, etc. and no resolution.

 

The Samsung won't recognize it as PC. Only signals from the VGA (analog) port will be PC, and have the various PC adjustments available. To the Samsung, your laptop is just another HDMI device (like a xbox or a bluray player).

I am not sure why, but it seems 1366x768 (or the more common 1360x768) is not available for selection on the E notebooks. The max the E6400 can do on your TV is 720p, which is 1280x720.

I am sure you've tried this, but what's "supposed" to happen is when you plug the HDMI/Displayport cable in, you can detect the Samsung TV in the display panel, and when you choose mirror, only resolutions up to 1280x720 is available.

Are you connecting directly to the TV, or thru a receiver that might not be passing thru the signal ?

The frequency is set to 59 or 60 Hz ?

Try rebooting with the HDMI cable connected and the TV on.

Sorry I can't be of more help.