TV as second display - anything to consider for newbie?

[Edge1]

I built a hand-me-down machine for a buddy and now we want to ramp up his overall PC experience. Biggest change is upgrading his vid card to a more HTCP-type arrangement given that his PC shares space in the living room with a 42" 720p plasma HDTV. I've never done this before (hooked up to TV) but have checked out a few blogs and YouTube vids. Any advice from this knowledgeable group would be highly appreciated.

Specs:
MSI P6N 650i platinum mobo
Core 2 Duo E6300 cpu, currently lightly OCed at about 2.4GHz I think
Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB video card (HDMI)
2GB DDR2-800 RAM
Panasonic Viera 42" Plasma HD TV
HDMI cable

What I've sort of gathered is that I basically
1) uninstall the old vid card and drivers (EVGA 7600GT)
2) install the new vid card and drivers, including Catalyst Control Center
3) plug in the HDMI cable
4) switch to HDMI as source on TV
5) go into CCCC and somehow configure the new secondary display

Is this more or less it? Do I need to know anything about resolution settings for the TV? What's this about cloning or extending the desktop? Is it possible I could accidentally damage the TV?

Sorry for all the questions but my intention is to actually improve this guy's media experience, not destroy it .

 

[Edge1]

Maybe I should put this in the video card/graphics forum?

Or maybe I'm good to go with the steps above.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

hooking up a tv to a puter is easy. the puter should instantly recognize that tv if connected with hdmi. in the advanced tv options, set the tv to 1:1 pixel mapping (or whatever it's called). use a custom resolution only as a last resort.

the problem is that it's a 720p screen. video playback will be ok, but any text (like this forum) will be awful. video games also have a hard time displaying properly at 720.

 

[Ross Ridge]

You're biggest problem with using a 720P 42" Plasma is that panel probably doesn't have a square pixel ratio. Pansonic's current 720P 42" models, the TC-P42C1 and TC-P42X1, have a standard 16:9 wide screen apect ratio but a 4:3 native resolution of 1024 x 768. That results in stretched pixels, where each pixel on the screen measuring 0.900 x 0.675 mm according to the specs.

PCs pretty much assume square pixels, so the results aren't going to be pretty. If you set the PC to use 1024 x 768 and the TV to a 1:1 "native" pixel mapping (assuming the TV even has such a mode), your text should look clear, but everything will be stretched out. If you set the PC to use the standard 720P wide screen resolution (1280 x 720), then TV will scale the image, resulting in blurry text, but everything should be the right size.

Otherwise you shouldn't have much problem. Read the manual to find out which resolutions the TV accepts through its HDMI connectors and don't expect any other resolutions to work.

Extending the desktop means that second screen becomes an extension of the Windows desktop where you can move your mouse to and drag windows to and stuff. It you set it up so Windows thinks its positioned to the left of your first screen then moving your mouse pointer off the left edge of your first screen causes the pointer to appear on the right edge of your second screen.

Cloning means that the second display simply shows an exact copy of the first display.

 

[Edge1]

Wow, OK guys that's just what I was looking for. I admit to being a little disappointed that gaming won't look too good apparently. Video playback is key also and that sounds like it might be acceptable.

Thanks for the heads up on the 1:1 pixel mapping thing and it also sounds like I'll clone the desktop to the second display.

Well this is our techie fun over the holidays excuse to get together and drink beer. Maybe the picture will get sharper as the night goes on .