Hook up to HDTV

Question

I have a black MacBook (I got it right before they stopped selling the black ones).  So I bought a Mini-DVI to HDMI and the proper cables to hook up the HDMI end to the HDMI on my Panasonic 32" but nothing is happening.  I have tried turning off both the computer and the tv and then turning on my computer while the cables are hooked up, but nothing happens.  The screen goes blue for a few seconds and then my computer screen goes back to normal; nothing ever shows up on the tv.  Am I doing something wrong?  Do I have the wrong cables?  I got the cables on Amazon and they look fine.

Answer 1

I have written these details to save other users time. I had thought that simply connecting the right cables and pointing the HDTV to the appropriate input source would do the job, but all I got was the purple galaxy background on the TV. Some setting changes are required, as you suspected.
CONNECTIONS
Start out by clicking on the apple symbol -> about this Mac -> more info to obtain the model identifier. Useful for knowing what cable adapter is needed.
For video, my Mac 5.1 required a male Mini DisplayPort to female HDMI adapter. Then I connected the regular male-to-male HDMI cable from the adapter to the TV.
For audio, the Mac 5.1 audio out port is the same as the headphone port. My HDTV came with a stereo cable which took care of this connection. By the way, I checked whether setting modfications were needed via system preferences -> sound -> output tab and found that the only selection allowed was “headphones”.
DISPLAY PREFERENCES
I referred to articles 61511, 61330 and 61512 on multiple displays. In OSX 10.5 I went about changing the settings as follows.
System preferences -> display
There will be two windows (this might not be immediately obvious as they are “cascaded” one right behind the other), one representing the display for the TV (mine was called color LCD) and the other representing the laptop screen (mine was called SMB2430HD).
Within the laptop display, there were three tabs: display, color, options.
Within the TV display, there were three tabs: display, arrangement, options.
Note that in order for the arrangement tab to be active, the video connection must have been hooked up and the TV turned on and pointed to the correct input source e.g. HDMI1.
RESOLUTION
Go first to the display tab of each window. Article 61330 says to set each to the same resolution and colour depth (I think the latter has millions as one of the selections). I was not very good at this. I tried 1024 x 768 stretched but the DVD movie I was playing did not entirely cover either the TV or laptop screen.
However, the ColorSync Utility had become activated and I believe it helped me later one. When I clicked on this utility I got a window called “profile first aid” and I clicked on the “verify” button. I think this is what led me to the 800 x 600 stretched resolution. Result: the DVD movie now covered both TV and laptop screen.
Also under the display tab (probably of the TV display at this point in time) is a check box for “show displays in menu bar”. Checking it will result in a shortcut to your display settings from the desktop.
Finally, under the display tab (within both TV and laptop display) is a useful button called “gather windows”. At this point, I had not yet chosen under the arrangement tab “mirror displays” and was getting “lost” for the following reasons. Curiously the TV display was shown on the Macbook screen while the laptop display appeared on the TV screen. Confused? So was I.
Sometimes I did not see the cursor on the screen I was looking at. So I would chase after the cursor by using the trackpad to continuously move to one side or the other, depending on which side I was allowed to move towards. Pressing the “gather windows” button moves the two displays together, one cascaded behind the other.
ARRANGEMENT
Within the TV display is the arrangement tab. Here you can find the “mirror displays” check box. The default is apparently called “extended desktop”. If you check the box, the identical images appear on both the TV and the laptop screen.
The tabs will also be automatically reorganized as a result.
Within the laptop display, there will be four tabs: display, arrangement, color, options.
Within the TV display, there will be two tabs: display, options.
By the way, although the DVD movie now covers the entire screen of both TV and laptop, on the TV the Mac menu bar remains partly off screen.
DARKENING LAPTOP SCREEN
When watching the HDTV you likely will not want to be distracted by an active laptop screen. To put it to sleep you need to connect an auxiliary keyboard or a mouse. The alternative is to hit the F1 button to reduce the backlighting.