How do I connect a MacBook Pro to HD TV?

I use my macbook pro on my hdtv half the time im using it.. If your machine is open, it treats the tv as a second monitor, and you can drag applications over to that window, but you will still have to primarily use your laptop screen...

However, if you have your laptop connected to a power source and you close it, then it treats your tv as the primary monitor. You will have to use a different connection for sound, btw.

One thing I can add above reecegriffith ...

As to sound, some use an HDMI connector and get no sound in the TV. The fix is to hook up the TV through the HDMI connector, then go to System Prefences, Sound, Output

Then select the TV (which will appear as an option).

Or so I am told.

The apple symol in the upper left hand screen brings up a menu

Pick System Preferecnes

Pick Sound fron the selection

Output is one of the tabs

When the TV is hooked up to the MBP, TV should be an option. Highlight that and "Internal" will be unselected.

Mike, please tell me if the following helps. And is clear enough.

CONNECTIONS

Start out by clicking on the apple symbol -> about this Mac -> more info to obtain the model identifier. Useful for knowing what cable adapter is needed.

For video, my Mac 5.1 required a male Mini DisplayPort to female HDMI adapter. Then I connected the regular male-to-male HDMI cable from the adapter to the TV.

For audio, the Mac 5.1 audio out port is the same as the headphone port. My HDTV came with a stereo cable which took care of this connection. By the way, I checked whether setting modfications were needed via system preferences -> sound -> output tab and found that the only selection allowed was “headphones”.

DISPLAY PREFERENCES

I referred to articles 61511, 61330 and 61512 on multiple displays. In OSX 10.5 I went about changing the settings as follows.

System preferences -> display

There will be two windows (this might not be immediately obvious as they are “cascaded” one right behind the other), one representing the display for the TV (mine was called color LCD) and the other representing the laptop screen (mine was called SMB2430HD).

Within the laptop display, there were three tabs: display, color, options.

Within the TV display, there were three tabs: display, arrangement, options.

Note that in order for the arrangement tab to be active, the video connection must have been hooked up and the TV turned on and pointed to the correct input source e.g. HDMI1.

RESOLUTION

Go first to the display tab of each window. Article 61330 says to set each to the same resolution and colour depth (I think the latter has millions as one of the selections). I was not very good at this. I tried 1024 x 768 stretched but the DVD movie I was playing did not entirely cover either the TV or laptop screen.

Sorry, Mike, part 2 follows:

However, the ColorSync Utility had become activated and I believe it helped me later one. When I clicked on this utility I got a window called “profile first aid” and I clicked on the “verify” button. I think this is what led me to the 800 x 600 stretched resolution. Result: the DVD movie now covered both TV and laptop screen.

Also under the display tab (probably of the TV display at this point in time) is a check box for “show displays in menu bar”. Checking it will result in a shortcut to your display settings from the desktop.

Finally, under the display tab (within both TV and laptop display) is a useful button called “gather windows”.

(At this point, I had not yet chosen under the arrangement tab “mirror displays” and was getting “lost” for the following reasons.) Curiously the TV display was shown on the Macbook screen while the laptop display appeared on the TV screen. Confused? So was I. Sometimes I did not see the cursor on the screen I was looking at. So I would chase the cursor by using the trackpad to continuously move to one side or the other, depending on which side I was allowed to move towards…and the cursor would eventually end up on the screen I was looking at. This is a phenomenon of “extended desktop” where each screen represents one side of the desktop.

Pressing the “gather windows” button moves the two displays together, one “cascaded” behind the other. You will be able to easily click each display in turn to switch between them.

ARRANGEMENT

Within the TV display is the arrangement tab. Here you can find the “mirror displays” check box. The default is called “extended desktop” where each screen represents one side of the desktop.

Under “extended desktop” mode, you can choose which display will be your main control screen. In the arrangement tab you will see two images representing the displays. Under extended desktop, the location of the menu bar determines which display you will use to control everything. One of them has a white border at the top that represents the menu bar. You can click and drag the menu bar to the other display to make it your main control screen.

If you check the “mirror displays” box, identical images appear on both the TV and the laptop screen.

The tabs will also be automatically reorganized as a result.

Within the laptop display, there will be four tabs: display, arrangement, color, options.

Within the TV display, there will be two tabs: display, options.

DARKENING LAPTOP SCREEN

When watching the HDTV you likely will not want to be distracted by an active laptop screen. To put it to sleep you need to connect an auxiliary keyboard or a mouse. The alternative is to hit the F1 button to reduce the backlighting.