External widescreen monitor on Inspirion 8200

I have an Inspiron 8200 with a 1600x1200 (UXGA?) 4:3 screen.

I've recently bought a widescreen LCD TV, with a PC input, which supports
1360x768.

I'd like to be able to use the TV as a monitor while the laptop is in it's
docking station. Currently, when I do, I can get an excellent picture at
1024x768, but I can't set the resolution to be anything other than 4:3 modes
(800x600, 1024x768 etc).

I'd obviously like to be able to set it to either 1360x768 or 1280x768.

Does anyone know of any way I can do this? Remember that my laptop has a
4:3 screen, from Googling, it looks like some Inspiron 8200s came with WS
screens - I would imagine they'd work on a WS monitor out of the box.

Thanks,
A.

 

Should also add that my Inspiron 8200 has the GeForce4 440 go video card.
Looks like some of the later ones came with ATI.

A.

 

Does the monitor have drivers that need to be installed to enable the other
resolutions. Just a thought.
HTH
Robert

 

According to Dell the I8200 came only in 4:3 screens. Therefore it's
unlikely
that the Dell site will upgrade this, but if you go to Dell support
Video Driver V.A03
and Video BIOS V.A05 are available.
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...&s=dhs&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_8200&os=WW1&osl=EN

 

What the internal screen can do shouldn't matter. Try installing the latest
nVidia drivers (www.nvidia.com) and use their control panel. Might take
some tweaking, but it will work.

Tom

 

I just did exactly this with my new Dell 42" plasma. You hook the laptop to
the TV with a VGA cable. Then open display properties on the laptop.
You'll see monitor 1 (the laptop) and monitor 2 (the TV). Set the TV
monitor #2, to 1360x768. I used the "extend my desktop" option. I think
you can also set monitor 2 as the primary, but I didn't try that and I'm not
at home to check. I did this with a 3 year old HP "cheapo" laptop and the
picture quality was really good.

alien