As a favor to my cousin i figured i would re-setup his home theater set up in a way that i liked more. Seeing two sets of rca cables used to send the same signal to the same place annoyed me after it caught my eye, but i realized the 2.1 could be more conveniently connected and their laptop as well.
In my attempts to get the tv running in any form i discovered that the tv does not allow an hdmi connection to the laptop unless it's selected as the current source, and from what i can tell the tv drops the connection when changing resolutions, and here is the problem.
After choosing a selection, regardless of it being clone, primary, secondary, or the resolution choosen of such, the laptop immediately reverts back to it's own monitor as the only functioning one after pinging that lovely hardware disconnected chime. In fact it happens so fast that it will give the hardware connected notification sound, show it as newly connected in the window, and then ask me if i want to keep the settings i've choosen after reverting back to them anyway. However, the tv does show a beautiful looking signal before that happens. Hardware is a geforce 8200M. The tv's inputs are being used, and there are no dvi nor vga connectors on it. No, there isn't currently a digital cable box or other such device capable of acting as intermediate.