Screen resolution for HDMI hookup

[o0Loiter0o]

Hi I'm new to Linux and am trying to hook my laptop up to my 40" Toshiba. When I did this in Win 7, the best resolution to use for TV display was 1280x720. When I hook my laptop up in Ubuntu, this resolution is unavailable. Why are there less resolutions available in Ubuntu? Is there a way that I can override this? Lastly, Win 7 will remember to reconfigure my resolution when my TV is connected and then switch it back to the monitor's native resolution when disconnected. Is this possible in Linux?

I have to attach screenshots because I'm new to the boards and you need 15 posts to link to sites, sorry.

Thanks
Chris

[Rubberman]

You are running the default video driver. What is your video hardware? It may be that you need a driver for your specific hardware (possibly proprietary) in order to get the additional resolutions. On the plus side, it seems to support the highest resolution that Windows 7 gives you as well...

[coopstah13]

1280x720 is not the native resolution, so I'm unsure how that is the best resolution for TV...but beyond that most likely it is a driver issue, do you have nvidia, ati, or intel? Hopefully you don't have ati, they are the most troublesome

[o0Loiter0o]

Thanks for getting back to me. I want to stress that I'm really new to Linux and appreciate your patience along the way.

1280x720 is not the native resolution, so I'm unsure how that is the best resolution for TV...but beyond that most likely it is a driver issue, do you have nvidia, ati, or intel? Hopefully you don't have ati, they are the most troublesome

My TV recommends 1280x720 in the owner's manual. Even in Win 7, this looks the best. Using the native res in Win 7 and duplicating to my TV doesn't size up right. 1280x720 in Win 7 stretches just about perfect (though I was expecting perfect), just clipping off a bit of the task bar. In Ubuntu, using the native res and duplicating to my TV makes my TV say "unsupported video format". The highest resolution available that I can get to duplicate to my TV at all is 1024x768, which only fills about 70% of the screen.

You are running the default video driver. What is your video hardware? It may be that you need a driver for your specific hardware (possibly proprietary) in order to get the additional resolutions. On the plus side, it seems to support the highest resolution that Windows 7 gives you as well...

I Googled around a bit today after you guys told me it was a driver thing. I have an Intel 4 Series Chipset Family display adapter. I couldn't figure out how to switch to the proprietary driver. I did...something (see yet another attachment) but it didn't seem to work much. Any ideas?

[coopstah13]

intel video is pretty well supported on linux

what version of ubuntu are you using? Its possible that we can just manually add some resolutions to xorg.conf file to make them available to you

one thing you can do, is see what linux thinks your TV supports by running the command xrandr and it should show a list (though i'm guessing it will be what you are seeing in that GUI)