Laptops and TV's: Excuse My Ignorance

I bought my daughter an XPS15 for Christmas a few months back. She loves it. Excellent for her needs.
Yesterday she asked me if there was a way to get it to play videos through an HDTV. I'll be damned if I know.
So, to the collective brain power here, can it be explained how this is done?
Thank you.

 

This is done fairly easy,you need to connect a HDMI cablefrom the hdmi port of the laptop to a hdmi port on the HDTV.Then select whatever HDMI port on the tv remote(eg.hdmi 1,hdmi 2).Your laptop screen should now appear on the tv.

 

It's that easy? A cable with an HDMI input on both ends? No special video card or program needed?

 

Nope! and...Yes is that easy!!

I don't know about the XPS15, but my XPS17 recognized the tv output automatically.
If yours don't, you need to setup you graphic card settings output in the Nvidia control panel.

To find it, just click with the RIGHT button of the mousepad on the desktop (any place) and choose "nvidia panel".

It's pretty much straight foward from there, look up for some screen options..

 

Pretty much usually.

 

It really is that simple. I just ran a cable from laptop to TV and, presto, there was the laptop screen on the TV screen. This might be the greatest thing since canned beer!
The only thing I need to figure out is why the TV screen isn't showing everything on the laptop screen. For example, when viewing a YouTube video, the control panel for the video that appears on the laptop screen wasn't visible on the TV screen. In other words, the picture on the TV is too big. How is this corrected?

 

Try look for overscan settings in the Intel GMA control panel.

 

there's also push2tv, the latest xps 15 should have wifi cards supporting it.

Its wireless, and you need to buy a small box to hook up to your tv unless it natively supports it, other than that I know little of the technology

If you go corded I suggest a mini displayport to hdmi cable, the HDMI association is saying it violates their specs so it may not be around much longer. That way you could use Optimus, otherwise HDMI > HDMI is going to always run the nvidia card and the fan might be distracting.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388289,00.asp for information on the recall / violation

 

You've lost me now. Could you clarify this, please?

 

There's two ways of doing this:

Via laptop: If it's an XPS 15 R1 you can look in the nVIDIA control panel instead. The option would be called "adjust desktop size and position"

Via TV settings: Look in the TV menus for something like 1:1 pixel mapping, fill screen, PC mode or something like that.

 

Thank you. I'll look around and see what works. Appreciate the help, all.

 

The easiest way is to adjust your resolution to the native resolution of the TV. For example, if the TV only supports 720p and your laptop screen is 1080p, than you want to bump down your screen resolution from 1920x1080 to 1280x720.

Just right click on the desktop and Screen resolution, change it to desired, click apply (not okay).

You can also get fancy, and turn it into a dual display by changing it from shared (or whatever it says in the dropdown) to dual desktops. I don't have it in front of me so the verbage may differ. This way you can continue browsing on the laptop while watching a movie on the big screen. Win win.

 

Thanks, travbjork.

 

How do you manage the 12GB when they only offer up to 8 on their website? Can you order the extra installed straght from Dell?

 

Configure w/3D display. Up to 16GB IIRC.