I want to be able to connect a notebook to a normal screen...

Hi,

I am thinking about buying a notebook... however. I also want to be able to connect this notebook to a normal monitor / screen ...

I've been told by some people that this would result in quality reduction of the picture! This seems unlikely to me since I've looked at some notebooks and they have a video out just like desktops.

Can anyone give me some info on this ?

Gdev

 

Maybe what those people have referred to is the loss of quality that happens when you connect a desktop LCD, which is digital by nature to the notebook video-out (or any video-out for that matter) which is analog. The double digital->analog->digital conversion really does not much good to the signal.

Such conversion should not take place in the builtin notebook LCD, because the video signal is transmitted internally through an interface which I assume is digital. It would also not happen if you connect an LCD with a DVI (digital) cable to a DVI-out on a notebook. But very few notebooks have this DVI-out. They are mostly present in docking stations.

 

Thanks for your reply dr_st... but what does this exactly mean...

Does it mean I can connect my notebook to a normal monitor without have a quality reduction ?

Gdev

 

Bottom line is, it should be fine. The quality reduction might not be noticeable, even if it is there.

You may need to adjust the resolutions properly. LCDs have fixed resolution. The resolution of your notebook LCD and desktop LCD may vary, and whenever you use one, better make sure to switch resolutions accordingly. If you run an LCD on a resolution higher than native, it won't be able to display it and will resort to scrolling the desktop. If you run it on a lower resolution, thing may look blurry. With CRTs this problem should not exist, but you'll still want to adjust the resolution properly to make it comfortable.

 

if your notebook has a higher resolution then the external monitor does, then the external monitor will be "larger" on the screen then the notebook. if you run a CRT, it will most likely not have that problem, since they generally can handle much higher resolutions.

pb,out.

 

With a normal PC monitor of any type, using a VGA connection, you should be fine. There's still an analog conversion between the internal digital output of the laptop's vidoe card and vga, but that's not the problem. The major issue is when using the S-Video output of a PC, which is limited to 640x480. It's mainly for use in showing presentations and such, which don't require high resolutions. However, higher resolution graphics (like games) will look bad unless you run the game in 640x480.

 

You should have no problem at all. My laptop resolution is 1920x1200, and when I plug in my secondary monitor, the secondary monitor is automatically set to its native resolution (1280x1024). It will work fine with no loss in quality. You can use a program called ULTRAMON that will configure your multiple monitors to however you want, but if you dont want that, you can configure everything within the windows settings.

Heres what my desktop looks like if your interested...notice the difference in resolutions...

 

Do you also play at that resolution Flame?

Family Guy 4th season...brilliant

Charlie-Peru

 

hehe no my secondary monitor automatically disables once I start playing a game