[Freeflyer]

Hi, last night I plugged my powerbook into the tv to watch a movie.

Is there a way to turn off the powerbook screen while it's connected to the tv as, even with the screen most of the way closed, you get an annoying copy of the film flickering away in the corner of the room.

Cheers,

J.

[Ambrosa]

Just turn the brightness all the way down. Or you could put the PB into sleep mode after hooking it up to the TV, and then wake it up with an external keyboard or mouse.

[coolmacdude]

Originally posted by Ambrosa:
put the PB into sleep mode after hooking it up to the TV, and then wake it up with an external keyboard or mouse.

This is actually a much better solution, as then all of the video ram will be dedicated to the TV, and you should get a better picture. When playing DVDs if I leave the LCD on the TV picture skips intermittently.

[dialo]

If you have a semi-modern powerbook, the VRAM shouldn't matter. For a year I played films off of a Ti500 (to a projector) and left both screens on, meaning 4 MB each, and had no problems whatsoever.

You can shut down the built-in display by either turning the brightness all the way down or setting the display to go to sleep after ~5 minutes. I always did both since even after you turn the brightness all the way down the LCD is still doing it's thing unless it is set to shut off soon after.

[Freeflyer]

Ah, didn't realise that I could set one screen to go to sleep without affecting the other.

Neat trick.

Thanks for all the replies.

Cheers,

J.

[coolmacdude]

Originally posted by dialo:
If you have a semi-modern powerbook, the VRAM shouldn't matter.

Depends on what you're playing. If its just small videos from the hard disk you're right that shouldn't make much difference. With DVDs it definitely makes a difference. I have a PB 800 with 32 MB Vram, even with that much I notice a big improvement when only running one screen. An easy way to see this is to do iTunes visuals, when running two screens the frame rate will only be about half as much on each as it is when only one screen is running.

[coolmacdude]

[dialo]

Originally posted by coolmacdude:
Depends on what you're playing. If its just small videos from the hard disk you're right that shouldn't make much difference. With DVDs it definitely makes a difference. I have a PB 800 with 32 MB Vram, even with that much I notice a big improvement when only running one screen. An easy way to see this is to do iTunes visuals, when running two screens the frame rate will only be about half as much on each as it is when only one screen is running.

Since the Apple DVD player only works on a second monitor when mirrored, the VRAM doesn't matter. There might be something wrong with your computer, since 32 MB of VRAM is 4x more than the 8 MB that played DVDs flawlessly off of the Ti500 I used to use with my projector. As long as it is mirrored, it's considered only one monitor using 32 MB whether you have the LCD on or not.