I just bought a new LCD TV and hooked my laptop up to it to try it out. I have never connected an external monitor to a laptop. Everything seems to work except when I play a video in Windows Media Player. The media player appears on the TV but the video canonly be seen on the laptop screen. Any suggestions?You have to configure the TV to be the primary screen. Consult the control panel for your graphics card. It should have a setting for this.Well I right clicked on the DESKTOP > SELECTED properties > settings tab > right clicked the 2nd display and selected "attached"

Then all I got on the 2nd display (TV) wass a distorted image of my background.
Adjusting the resolution got a clear picture of the background but no matter what is displayed on the laptop, all i get on the TV is the background. The option to set the 2nd display to primary is greyed out and cannot be selected.

PLEASE HELP!!!It is hard to GIVE you generic advice because the way you set this varies between the different brands of graphics cards.
So we will need to a little more about the laptop.
Could you tell us what graphics card it has or FAILING that the brand name and model number of the laptop.
Also what version of Windows are you using?
And how is the TV connected to the laptop? I feel like an idiot (pretty much am when it comes to computers). I finally figured out that I have it set up as 2 seperate screens I guess. So when I roll off one edge on the laptop it displays on the 2nd display. So I can run different aps or windows on the 2 screens. Kinda cool I guess. What I originally intended for it to do was just display the same image on both screens.Most graphics cards should support both (not at the same time though).
What you've got now is usually called extended desktop mode while clone mode gives you the same image on both screens. It is in clone mode you need to define a primary and secondary screen.I guess I would like to do the "clone mode" If I can. Any advice on how I might do this? I havent seen anything in the settings. Like I said before, Im kind of an idiot when it comes to computers, but here is some info:

Laptop - HP Pavillion ze4400
Display Adapter - RADEON IGP 320M
Running Windows XPIf you right click on your desktop do you have a menu point called ATI Catalyst Control Center?NopeOkay you most have an older driver then... no worries though.
Go to desktop > selected properties > settings tab and press the ADVANCED button.
You should have a lot of tabs with the red ATI icon.
Select the Displays tab.
It should look something like this:

But the red button over the TV (or monitor depending on how the TV is connected) should be green.
Click the button with a dot inside a circle for the screen you want to be primary. The other screen should switch to secondary automatically.

Click apply and ok to save the settings.Thanks for the help Deerpark. I think I got it. This is my first time using this forum and it is AWESOME!Glad I could help. Be sure to stop by any time.