Question about HDMI output on my new laptop.

I just received my Dell Studio XPS 1340 and its wonderful. It has an HDMI jack and I plug it into my TV and it works perfectly...it displays 1080i (my TV's fault that its not 1080p) crisp and clear.

The thing is, HDMI is for the video picture, but the sound only comes from the laptop. This just won't work. I DO have a sound system in my living room connected to the TV...but it uses an analog component cable to connect to the TV (honestly, who needs HD audio? not me).

Anyway, I'm wondering how to make it so that the sound plays on the TV or through the speaker system instead of my laptop (which doesn't really get super loud).

I have the following jacks on my laptop:

1 x HDMI
1 x USB
1 x ESATA/USB
1 x 1394a port
1 x VGA
1 x Ethernet
1 x Display Port

So I don't really know how I would go about transferring audio to the television.

 

can you not unplug the speakers and plug them into the laptop's headphone port? or buy a usb sound card with 5.1 or w/e you have.

 

You can go to your sound device panel and set HDMI as default audio playback.

 

You have to manually reconfigure your Sound output for external operation -

1. Control Panel - Sound
2. Your current Default output is the PC Speakers/Headset - click on
"Digital Output Device" (it may say either HDMI or SPDIF, makes no difference either way), then click on the "Set Default" button.

This will reconfigure your Audio output to go through your HDMI cable. Just remember to change it back once you're finished or you'll be back here asking how to get sound back through your PC speakers.

Note also that some HDTV's have independent HDMI "sense" settings that have to be set to Auto in order for it to sense when an HDMI cable is plugged into the system. If you don't set it correctly your TV won't see an HDMI connection. Not all do, but a lot of them do have that control.

For an external speaker setup it would be the same setting, hooking your external speakers up to the HDTV rather than the notebook. If you want to try and run the sound from your PC, you can do it with an X-Fi card, but keep in mind that any sound run independently of the video signal will likely be delayed a small amount, at least enough to be a pain. That's why it's better to tap the audio signal from the TV rather than the PC.

 

^^^
Yep.