The “X11 video output” worked.

Andy – in vlc, go to Preferences > video and make sure that output is set to “X11 video output” instead of “XVideo extension video output”. The XVideo extension can only display video on one of the screens (monitor or TV), not both.
Quality isn’t good, as I mention, but it works for me.

Dell Latitude D600 : ATI Radeon 9000 Mobility : Ubuntu 9.04 – GNOME

I tried this script with/without xvattr. It displays the live screen on the TV, but blanks to deep blue when VLC goes to fullscreen video; windowed VLC shows a blank box on TV, live on system.

For s-video, it comes out looking like poor composite video with left/right margin deformation.

I’m not familiar with this xorg.conf folks have mentioned.

NOTE: Had to uninstall ATI Radeon Catalyst Control Center and the fglrx-amdcccle module because it corrupted/froze my graphics. ATI is failing to keep up with X.

Dude, changing resolution every time you want to watch a movie is not a solution. It feels much more like sediment.

Remember, xorg.conf is going away only when and because autodetection gets good enough. That’s what we tech folks call “maturity”. Since we are not yet there, conf-ing the shit out of your X is way more elegant than changing resolution every time you want to watch a movie.

What card you use? Is open source driver really sufficient? Running OS intel here, but still using Nvidia prop. on the real machine. Maybe you should upgrade driver/kernel independently, not from official repos. There just has to be a better way than changing resolution every time you want to watch a movie.

Wait, did I say that already? Never mind, once more won’t hurt, just to really let it sink in: you are CHANGING YOUR DESKTOP RESOLUTION EVERY TIME YOU WANT TO WATCH A MOVIE.

Hell, you might as well rewrite some of your window manager to display clients on the TV, hard-coding the size of your TV as you go along.

oh, thats me up there, and your openid thing is not working