Problem with screen resolution on laptop

[nickc78]

Previously I have linked up my laptop with a cable to my LCD TV and I have enjoyed films perfectly shown in fullscreen mode. Something has happened recently that now causes the screen size on the TV to shrink when the lid on my laptop is shut. When I close the lid the screen shrinks and aligns to the left of the screen so that it appears that there is a letterbox effect on 3 sides of the picture. When I open the lid it is resolves itself but it is rather annoying - I have rechecked the windows settings for when the lid is shut and everything is set to do nothing. I am running Windows Vista 32-bit SP 1 my version of VLC is 0.8.6f

[fearthehat1]

Have you tried configuring your video card? Most video cards with TV out have a way to configure their settings, including screen cropping and resizing etc (in XP you would do this by opening Control Panel -> Display -> Advanced, I'm not sure if it's the same with Vista)

[jumbika]

Hi, I'm looking to buy a laptop, and I want to buy one with a ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card. How do I know if my laptop can take graphics cards and that it doesn't have an integrated card that I can't upgrade? So what would be a good laptop to get if I wanted to play--let's say atleast Half-Life 2. Like I'm looking for a decent graphics card...not too high end, but not low end either. What most people would get.