HDMI Output

My laptop has 480M, but the video only shows on the builtin display, how do I get to use the builtin hdmi port, this is Zorin OS 4 and I have installed the proprietary nvidia driver.

First let me say I have an external monitor on my laptop on a nvidia 480m through the hdmi port. I like windows fine and in windows the video and sound are transferred to the external mintor with the Fn+F7 key combination for video and the sound is transferred using the speaker icon on the taskbar by right clicking and making the hdmi device the default. Not so simple in linux, first I got the video working which I will explain in a sec and the sound does not work yet on the hdmi monitor but I read the latest nvidia driver allows it to work which I have downloaded but I have not figured out how to install it yet, I read a post that suggested backing up the /etc/X11/xorg.conf and running this cmd in a terminal window,

sudo nvidia-settings

This cmd did not work for one key reason, it was not mentioned to delete the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, so I read another post that did work, it to delete this file then run this cmd to recreate it,

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Then I was able to run this cmd and set/apply/save my settings,

sudo nvidia-settings

This worked for me but the post actually said to run this cmd,

gksudo nvidia-settings

I am new at linux so I do not know the difference between the two yet but I posted it in case someone needs it.

Here is the link,

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1312435

I have managed to get the nvidia driver upgraded but do not have hdmi sound yet, so if you do not mine leaving this open to reply to on this subject, but it is up to you guys, more on setting the nvidia settings with the original settings still set I had to set the second display to twinview first apply and save this, if you want this view you should have a setting for orientation, but I want only this display enabled so I continued on, then I was able to set it as the primary display and apply and save this, then I switched back to the other display and set it to disabled and applied and saved it.

Well I finally got hdmi sound, thanks for the suggestion about the cable, actually I was almost to the point of using the headphone jack on the laptop since it is usually right beside my display, here is the link involved in solving this issue,

http://vaioubuntu.wordpress.com/2009/07 ... ulseaudio/

I only followed this article down to the figure or box window whatever you want to call it, running the grep script should give you the lines to add to your default.pa file, although your result may be a little different mine was,

pdlu@pdlu-D900F:~$ sudo aplay -l | grep -o -e "card [0-9]:.*[0-9]:" | sed -e "s/card \([0-9]\): \(.*\) \[.*device \([0-9]\).*/load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:\1,\3 sink_name=\2/"
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0 sink_name=Intel
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,1 sink_name=Intel
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,6 sink_name=Intel
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,3 sink_name=NVidia
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,7 sink_name=NVidia
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,8 sink_name=NVidia
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,9 sink_name=NVidia

I did not insert all of this here is what I inserted,

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0 sink_name=Intel
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:1,7 sink_name=NVidia

To narrow it down to these to I used this command,
pdlu@pdlu-D900F:~$ sudo aplay -D plughw:0,0 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono
pdlu@pdlu-D900F:~$ sudo aplay -D plughw:1,7 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono

These are the first successful tries for this cmd one for analog and one for hdmi, your results may be different and I do not know the result of adding all the results from the script so be careful, after adding the two lines to the default.pa I restarted, after logging in I accessed the sound preferences from the speaker icon, selected the output tab, before I only had two devices present now I had four, selecting the second high definition device gave me hdmi sound even though it was not labeled hdmi.

It should be noted the hdmi video and sound will not switch back to your laptop like it will in windows with the plugging and unplugging of the hdmi cable.