Off and on for some time now I’ve been using a Toshiba x205-s9359 laptop with (11.4/KDE4.6) during the day as a general purpose laptop using the onboard LCD and in the evenings to run XBMC to play movies on a TV using an HDMI cable (no cable TV on our little island & Satellite TV is poor in the rainy season).
The video card is an NVidia GeForce 8700M GT with NVidia’s proprietary driver v. 275.09.07 (installed the “hard way”).
Audio info:
~> aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC268 Analog [ALC268 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC268 Digital [ALC268 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 3: ALC268 Digital [ALC268 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
I control the audio with pavucontrol.
It’s been a real PITA learning to divert audio and video to the TV. The changeover would run something like this:
- Shut down the PC and connect the HDMI cable to the PC.
- Turn on the TV and changes its input setting to HDMI
- Boot and use nvidia-settings to set the TV to twinview and disable the on-board LCD
- Connect a couple of external speakers (I couldn’t get the audio to work over the HDMI cable, and nobody on the island had the right audio cables and adapters to run PC>TV.
Today I simply got mad and spent all day figuring out by trial and error how to do it much more simply. Now I just shut down, connect the HDMI cable to the TV and reboot.
I make no representation that these exact steps will work on any other hardware, but I offer my findings in hopes they’ll give some other frustrated soul a few clues.
To divert audio to HDMI port on Toshiba X205:
Add this section to /etc/pulse/default.pa
### Load HDMI device
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,3
load-module module-combine sink_name=combined
set-default-sink combined
Restart your PC
Run Alsamixer
~> alsamixer
Use F6 to select the sound card output. Make sure that S/PDIF 1 is unmuted by pressing the letter “m” without quotes. This is a toggle and will switch between being muted and not.
Then:
~> su
Password: ***********
# alsactl store
To divert video to HDMI port on Toshiba X205:
Backup the following files just in case:/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-screen.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf
Create a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-screen.conf, and insert the following code:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "0"
Option "metamodes" "DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Create a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf, and insert the following code:
Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "LG Electronics LG TV"
HorizSync 31.0 - 60.0
VertRefresh 57.0 - 63.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
create a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf, and insert the following code:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce 8700M GT"
EndSection
Reboot
Now the Audio/Video both go to the TV via HDMI if it’s connected prior to boot, if not the laptop works normally.
If you try this with XBMC don’t forget to go to set the XBMC settings to “HDMI” as needed.
(I’d like to thank the many other forum users whose various posts I mined for the many, many tidbits of information I culled through to come up with this solution.)