vlc-playing DVD won't display on external monitor

[Robert P. J. Day]

Quoting "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>:

>   ok, as a followup to my previous post, i slapped f9 on
> my inspiron, then VLC and associated RPMs, popped in a DVD,
> it plays nicely on the laptop.
>
>   then, connected an external (samsung WUXGA) flat-panel
> monitor via DVI, and the entire laptop display is reflected
> nicely on the monitor *except* for the actual DVD image in
> the VLC window -- that just shows up as blank, either in
> regular or fullscreen mode (in fullscreen mode, the entire
> external display is blank, even while the movie is playing
> on the laptop).
>
>   i'm no expert at video so, somehow, the DVD image is
> not being passed out on DVI, while everything else is.
> thoughts?  is there a VLC setting to tweak this?  this is
> a dell inspiron 9200 so it's a fairly old system -- at
> least a couple years.  but until now, running external
> displays off that DVI port has worked just fine.  so
> why is the DVD video content being treated this way?
>
> rday

   ok, i just realized what the problem is -- the onboard
video simply isn't powerful enough to display the playing
movie both on the laptop display and on the external display,
so i simply need to disable the laptop display.  and one
would think this would be easy -- there is a blue "CRT/LCD"
on F8, leading me to conclude that a simple Fn/F8 should do
it.

   sadly, that key combo has no effect.  how odd, since it's
*exactly* what i want to do -- disable onboard video and
drive external video.  i will now google, but if someone knows
how to get that on an inspiron 9200, i am *so* interested
in hearing it.

rday