Decided to get my Acer Revo 3610 connected to my nice new Sony TV. From reading on the web, it was clear that the Nvidia Ion graphics were more than capable of producing a good picture via the HDMI port. I had already installed the Nvidia Restricted driver so I hoped it was good to go.
So plugged in the TV via HDMI and re booted the Revo. Boots straight away using the TV as the monitor. Ok so that works but not really what I want as it is a desktop machine as well. Reboot, switch off TV – same result. Reboot – unplug HDMI – back to the VGA. So I need to configure the X setup.
Open the Nvidia tool on Ubuntu. Did some fiddling but could not save the config file. to cut a long story short, I realised that the Nvidia X Server utility was not opening as sudo so did not have write permissions on that folder. Easily solved by copying the launcher to the desktop and adding ‘gksu’ to the command in the properties. To change on the menu, right click on the Ubuntu logo in top left corner, select edit menus and edit the launcher.
Now I can edit the X Server settings. Usual caveats apply in taking backups of the files. I reconnected the TV HDMI cable then clicked ‘detect displays‘. A new item appears in the layout pane as ‘disabled‘. Select it then select configure. I chose separate X screen and apply. You do then need to write it to the config file before quitting
I wanted to restart the Xserver without rebooting and discovered it was very simple. ctl-alt-F1 drops you into a terminal. Login to that terminal and type gdm restart.
So now I have 2 screens, both with the usual Ubuntu menus. On the TV open VLC and play the movie file of your choice!
Except not quite as there was no sound. Again a bit of digging directed me to this thread. Alsamixer was already installed so running it from a terminal brings up a strange terminal GUI. Trick is to use arrow keys to cycle along to IE958 1 an use the ‘m’ key to un-mute the sound.
Try VLC again and all works perfectly.
In this case VLC is my palyer of choice as it will play my Toppy .rec files out of the box and gives a far superior picture than the SCART connection.
So happy days! There is abit more on this subject in this Wiki although it does not twig how to write the config files.