I have a thinkpad T480 with LMDE and up until about two months ago it would work with this Samsung commercial display TV, although it never played audio from the TV like it was supposed to.

Now when I plug in the HDMI cable the screen turns black (not blue, which is when there’s no signal). If I go into display it shows that the TV is connected.

I know that this isn’t a hardware issue because I’ve used the same HDMI cable and laptop on a different TV and it worked fine. xrandr also says that HDMI-2 is connected.

Help

  • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago
    1. Any recent software updates that you might find relevant?
    • It would be good to know which distro you use
    • “Samsung commercial” would make me believe it doesn’t get automatic updates, but just in case, that is also a factor.
    1. Does the TV work with other input sources on the same port?
    2. Reading “Samsung”, I would assume it has multiple input ports. What was the result with other ports.
    • countrypunk@slrpnk.netOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      I mentioned in my post that I use LMDE. There aren’t any recent software updates that I recall specifically that did it. The TV does work with other people’s laptops in the same port. There’s two HDMI ports on the TV and they give the same results. The TV is a dumb TV.

      • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        1 day ago

        LMDE

        Oops! I thought it was some obscure DE.

        Considering your points, it seems to be most probably some configuration issue.
        Might even be that some of the automated monitor/display configuration tools (might be some GUI settings thing) wonked out and reconfigured something.

        If your system has some shortcut combination for selecting external monitor/connected projector/mirror screen, perhaps you can try that.

        Also, since you mentioned xrandr, I would assume X Session. You can also use xrandr to check and set the monitor configuration. Not just whether it is connected, but also location (left/right/up/down) and screen resolution of each display separately. Perhaps trying those could tell you what is happening.