HDMI out to external display on L502X...It's not working.

I recently got my ASUS external monitor for my L502X and naturally I was excited. Plugged it in via HDMI and boom, no signal. So I sent the monitor back. Got my new NEW one tonight, and same thing. So I plug it into my girlfriend's Inspiron 17 through HDMI and lookie there, it works. No problems on hers, many on mine. I don't get it. The port seems okay, and the external screen recognizes that it's being plugged into my computer because it wakes up, but it still reports no signal AND my XPS isn't recognizing that any external display has even been plugged in. Please help brethren.

 

have you checked the Nvidia Control Panel settings? You might need to make some changes in that.

 

Checked in there. No go man. I'm stumped.

 

does Nvidia Control Panel even detect your HDMI device?

 

Nope. It does not.

 

As usual, update your drivers, just to make sure it's nothing wrong with that, as well as the Intel drivers. Doesn't hurt to be diligent with that.

If that fails, call up Dell. It might be that you have a faulty/damaged HDMI port.

One last thing is to just try plugging your XPS into a TV, just to see if it outputs there.

 

I'm very diligent with updates. Almost obsessive. The HDMI port works fine with TV's, but not with my monitor. I used miniDisplay Port to HDMI converter and it worked with no issues. Could it be an HDMI handshake issue?

 

Possible, but I doubt it. You say that you've only had trouble with the one monitor. TVs have been successfully hooked up.

Maybe give the handshake a try: power up your ASUS monitor for a good 10 minutes - literally have it sit powered up but not plugged into any video source. Then after the 10 minutes, hook up your XPS to the ASUS monitor and see if it does detect and display properly.

As I understand, a bad HDMI handshake is when the source is attempting to send the video content when the display is not ready yet (thus causing some sort of traffic jam of data). However, I thought that most if not all modern monitors were capable of preventing handshakes. I could be wrong though!

 

Could my ASUS monitor not be HDCP ready? I don't even know what that is really, or if it even matters. When I hook up to my Panasonic tv with the HDMI out the Nvidia control panels points out that both the card and the tv are HDCP ready. I'm not trying to take this out on any of you, but this flippin' bugs me!

 

something between the PC and the monitor as HDMI is HDCP enabled monitor or TV it's part of the standard.

Plug in laptop leave it off and turn on monitor.
connect cable between two devices
turn on laptop


with the lid open, machine should show 2 screen for BIOS and then 1 monitor active until after you login with Win 7 at which point you go into display properties and tell it to extend your desktop onto monitor 2 or clone it. As soon as you do that, the second display should activate.

I have AMD solution and it just clones the display until you set it otherwise.

 

Highly unlikely. I dare say that all LCD monitors that have DVI and/or DVI input ports have HDCP.

HDCP is kind of like "DRM-ready" for video content. This is an extremely stripped down analogy, but I think it holds up in this case. As an example, you would not be able to play a Bluray movie disc (e.g. with PowerDVD) over VGA to an external LCD monitor because VGA is not supported by HDCP; HDMI and DVI are.

Even if your monitor did not support HDCP, you shouldn't have this particular problem - you would just not be able to view HDCP protected content such as Blurays discs, and perhaps some DRM protected downloadable content.

You say that the Nvidia Control Panel says it detects the Panasonic TV. Are you able to output to it normally? If not, this may be a problem with your HDMI itself. We know that at least you can output via the miniDisplayPort -> HDMI adapter, but this goes through the Intel GPU not the Nvidia GPU.

I never asked, because I forgot to, but have you tried the following:
1. keep your XPS LCD screen open. plug in the HDMI cable. close the XPS LCD lid. does the ASUS monitor report anything?
2. with your XPS LCD screen closed, plug in the HDMI cable. does the ASUS monitor report anything?
3. when the HDMI cable is plugged in, try cycling through the different outputs via the Win+P key combination. It will cycle through DIsconnect Projector, Duplicate, Extended, Projector Only. See if you can get anything from those.

I've honestly never had extensive trouble with external monitors before, so I'm just going through some troubleshooting steps (which I'm sure you've probably already taken) that come to mind.