Connecting to HDTV distorts desktop picture

I was finally able to connect my Macbook Pro to my Sony Bravia HDTV by using a VGA/SVGA cable. But as soon as the cable was connected my desktop images became distorted and swelled in size, cutting most open windows halfway out of view. I'm using a DVI adaptor on my computer and then a Male-to-male VGA/SVGA cable to connect to the TV. Rebooting did not fix the issue. Does anybody know if there's some sort of setting I need to do on the computer (or TV) to eliminate this distortion?

Go to System Preferences, go to Displays. If the monitor isn't already detected, hit the Detect Displays button. Sounds like it's just a matter of finding your preferred resolution, so play with it until the picture looks right... or have you already tried this? I haven't connected my laptop to my big screen since 2003 (macmini connected now, my new laptop doesn't have a cable I can connect through, so I can't run a trial to see what happens with 2 displays now) but if I remember it correctly, it's just a matter of mirroring (make sure you mirror displays if you want to see the same thing on each screen, not just extend your desktop) and settings being tweaked until it works. But that was a few OS ago. If you can't get it to work, post up some screenshots of your Displays prefpane and I'll try to walk you through it.
the following article may help, skip installing and read read toward the end: http://www.macinstruct.com/node/78
Message was edited by: snowsister

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