How do I connect a MacBook Pro to HD TV?

Question

I just bought a new HD TV. I bought a mini display port to HDMI cable and connected the MacBook into HDMI port 3 on the TV.
My Macbook "Purple Sky" screen appears but no other icons, menus, trays etc. The Screen Setting dialog box appears but it is different to the one on my macbook. I cannot get anything on my macbook to show on the screen other than the default "purple sky" screen. Does anyone know if there is something i need to be setting on the TV (Samsung D55 8000) or my MacBook Pro in order to make this work? Thanks so much.

Answer 1

Sorry, Mike, part 2 follows:
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 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…and the cursor would eventually end up on the screen I was looking at. This is a phenomenon of “extended desktop” where each screen represents one side of the desktop.
Pressing the “gather windows” button moves the two displays together, one “cascaded” behind the other. You will be able to easily click each display in turn to switch between them.
ARRANGEMENT
Within the TV display is the arrangement tab. Here you can find the “mirror displays” check box. The default is called “extended desktop” where each screen represents one side of the desktop.
Under “extended desktop” mode, you can choose which display will be your main control screen. In the arrangement tab you will see two images representing the displays. Under extended desktop, the location of the menu bar determines which display you will use to control everything. One of them has a white border at the top that represents the menu bar. You can click and drag the menu bar to the other display to make it your main control screen.
If you check the “mirror displays” box, 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.
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.