When I hook up my laptop to a TV using an S video cable, I can see the display on the TV Screen, and everything looks fine. But, when I open a media file, the file only plays on my laptop screen, and on the TV the program is open but the box where the media is playing is just black.

Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks a lot

Hit Alt + Enter to go to full screen mode, see if that makes a difference(same thing to go back to window mode)

i know copyrighted material will only play on one thing. like if you "print screen" in wmp with a dvd playing and copy it into word and it will be the wmp window but just a black screen. thats probably why. you are using it in 2 sources. on the laptop and on the tv. it will only output it to one source

yep, i finally got it to play last night, It only plays on the "primary output" so you can either change wich monitor is your primary output under your video card settings, or just view it on one screen.

Most laptops have an FN (function) key press that in combination with another key, usually one of the number keys (look for picture of an LCD on top of the number) hope this helps.