Resolution detection for external projectors lacks manual overwrite

[Stephan Wissel]

When pluggin in an external projector the external resolution doesn't get discovered reliable. This mostly happens in hotels or meeting facilities where AV equipment has long calbles, low quality cables or all sorts of switches between PC and projector. This renders the Ubuntu Laptop useless as presentation machine. To adjust setting for a previously unknown projector you typically have 30-90 sec, so fiddling with X11 config files is out of the question.

Suggestion to fix:
In the Gnome control center, Display settings screen (where you discover displays and set resolutions) add the ability to manually specify display properties. Before doing that manual, display a big fat warning.

There are 2 UI concepts I could imagine:

a) Extend the dropdown list to have the last option "Manual overwrite ..."
b) Have a button next to the resolution "Manual overwrite ..."

both would then show a dialog with the most common configurations (the most probable use case is "projector at meeting facitily", so there are not that many) and the option to memorize that for this user.

Problem occured since I use Ubuntu from 10.04 to 13.10.

[Stephan Wissel (stw-linux)]

Fixed package - change needs to be in the control center

[Stephan Wissel (stw-linux)]

Didn't accept package name, switched to project gnome-control-center-unity

[Stephan Wissel (stw-linux)]

Bug 240916 is about configuring a graphics card that isn't properly discovered. Something that can be fixed in an Xorg.conf. This bug is about the ad-hoc configuration of a SECONDARY display, most notably a projector where cabling prevents reliable detection of output capabilities.

So 240916: base system configuration. Here: don't look like a dumb ass after walking into a foreign meeting room - that are 2 quite distinct scenarios and should be treated differently.

[Stephan Wissel (stw-linux)]

Latest insight:
On my current hardware (Lenovo W530) with Ubuntu 12.10 the detection of a projector capability fails 100% of the time when an extension cable sits between the projector and the laptop's VGA port and I only get 640x480.

However when I use the Mini DisplayPort with a VGA adaptor, the failure rate drops to 10% and usually I can use alt least 1024x768. So the MiniDV to VGA adapter works as work-around