So I had a good setup with my old PC where I had it connected to my monitor with a DisplayPort cable and my LG TV with an HDMI cable that stretches across the room.
I got a new Alienware Aurora R11 recently and swapped it into place just yesterday. I can’t get the LG TV to pick up the HDMI signal!
Weirdly, the LG TV shows up in my Nvidia control panel but it’s grayed out.
I can Duplicate the Displays and both will show up but when I select Show Only on 2, nothing goes through.
I unplugged and replugged and rebooted and powered down the TV repeatedly.
My Hisense TV recommends changing Picture Settings to HDMI 2.0, which also has a Standard and Enhanced setting. Messing around with them has helped me sometimes when I have issue. Of course, none of this may help, or even apply to your LG.
I just unplugged everything and rebooted and then plugged in the long 30ft HDMI cable to the TV.
When I booted up, the Alienware logo came up and I thought I was in business. But then when Windows should have popped up with a Log In screen, I got the No Signal screen again.
Does that mean it’s a software problem?
I tried an old HDMI-to-DP adapter I had lying around (used to use it for a 1080p projector) and the Alienware logo popped up but now it was much larger due to a lower resolution.
The PC works fine with my LG TV as a main monitor when I was using an 8 foot HDMI cable.
Is it a cable length issue?
Is it a driver issue with my video card? It’s an RTX 3080.
I am flummoxed over here!
Any reason to think a newer, 4K-compatible HDMI-to-DP adapter would work?
The second screen sounds normal if it showed the logo and then turned off before you logon. After login you have to detect / enable the second monitor.
When I select “Duplicate these displays” they both work. So obviously the long cable works.
When I choose “Extend these displays” the LG TV signal drops out. (Not that I would want to Extend them. I use one or the other, but never both in a stretched configuration.)
I know off resolutions can cause the screens to look black and not work right, but not sure why it would default to the wrong one. I believe in extend they are set independently but not in duplicate mode.
It could be a bad HDMI cable too. I recently had that issue. I would get a video feed and then boom, no video. What was going on? I switched the cable and the problem went away.
Just a possibility from my recent experience, something to check.
Thanks, all! I guess I could try a new cable… this is an iBirdie cable and it’s only like 9 months old and works fine with my other PC in 4K. It also works with Duplicate these Displays so… it does seems weird to replace it.
Maybe I can live with Duplicate these Displays for a while and just power down whichever one I’m not using.
I thought maybe there would be an FPS hit but I just loaded up Immortals: Fenyx Rising and it seemed fine. I think the only thing I can’t have is HDR on the LG TV when they’re duplicated.
If it definitely works with other things it rules out the cable. I verified my new cable was bad by testing it with my Series X and unlike the PC it wouldn’t even work part of the time, which verified for me that it was the cable.
If the cable works at the same resolution and refresh rate with other things then it’s fine. But often a cable will only fail at the highest data rates.
Duplicate these displays may be giving you a different res or refresh rate than running them as separate displays. I recall having a 1080p and a 4k monitor connected once and duplicate would run them both at 1080p, separate would run them at their native resolutions.
If it works in your desired configuration with a different cable, it’s the cable, simple as that.
But the monitor and TV have the same native 4K resolution.
How can I tell if the refresh rate is the problem? I don’t know how to change it while running Duplicate mode or when I can’t get the signal to the LG TV.
All the settings are grayed out so I can’t change them:
No luck setting the LG TV to be the only monitor. I tried various resolutions and refresh rates. I think it was just set at the default 60hz so I went back to that.
When I had the LG set to 1080p, the Extend These Displays option worked and I had the desktop across both the monitor and the TV. But it still refuses to be the only display.
So weird.
Let me go back over this:
For the past two weeks, I’ve had my new PC plugged into my LG TV as the only display monitor using a new iBirdie 8 foot HDMI cable and it worked great.
Then I moved it and plugged in my Acer monitor and Index headset to DisplayPorts 1 and 2 and the LG TV into the HDMI port using the 35 ft cable.
Acer works, Index works, LG TV only works in Duplicate mode, never by itself.
I tried to troubleshoot by unplugging the Acer monitor and my Index headset. I just had the PC running to the LG TV on the 35 ft HDMI cable.
I got the Alienware boot up logo but it dropped the signal as soon as Windows wanted to start.
Windows issue? Driver issue? Is there more I can try on refresh rate?
Am I missing some Windows monitor set up? Windows has both labeled as Generic PnP Monitor.
Think I’m gonna drop $10 on one of these and cross my fingers that it might work via DP.
