I recently setup my first htpc using xbmc and my old gaming laptop. I have enough horsepower to run current games as well as games from my GoG collection. The BG series ( and all the other D&D games like TOEE and Icewind Dale) are very hard to play on a large screen tv. I have a 46 inch display and my couch is about 8 feet away from that, but I can't get the game to display in full screen on a TV.

Is this just something I have to either live with or sit closer to the tv? Has anyone manged to get it to fill the screen on an HDTV?

Thanks

I have. I use my 32" HDTV for my computer screen, and have also played around with a (brand new) laptop connected to 46" HDTV, using integrated Intel 4000 graphics.

The game should go full-screen regardless. If Windows itself is not full-screen or not aligned properly, the problem is either your output resolution or the TV is not scaling the image. There might be a Picture Size / Zoom button on your TV remote to "fit-to-screen".

If Windows itself is perfectly full-screen and the game is not, the problem might be in your graphics card control panel. Check for an aspect ratio setting, you want the scaling option set to "aspect ratio". (Nvidia cards). Check the game settings, run BGconfig.EXE and make sure full-screen is selected.

What graphics card is the laptop using?

I had no problem with my AMD C50 and infinity engine games. They play full screen just fine on my HDTV.
What I had to do was using only one screen. If one screen was a clone, for some reason the games wouldn't run full screen. I can't remember if I updated my drivers though. It's been a while.

Hi, thanks for the replies. The GPU is a Geforce 9800M GTS. What I ended up doing was in the Nvidia control panel changing the scaling to full screen, apply to GPU. When set to aspect ratio I still had only a non-landscape screen. Now it fills the whole screen. It stretches it, but it doesn't look too bad. At least stuff is large enough now that I can see it from my couch on my 46 inch TV.

Cheers!

You can use the widescreen mod to get a non-stretched 16:9 widescreen. Only the main game world will be widescreen however, other screens like inventory etc will be normal 4:3 with black borders on the side (but still vertically full screen). Some people set the resolution too high making everything look tiny, but the game was not designed for 1080p. Instead should use vertical resolutions same as the game was made with, only wider, like 1066x600, or 1366x768. (These are for 16:9 screens)

I use a 36" HDTV for my comp monitor. Baldur's Gate 1 looks blurry as hell on it and the widescreen mod won't work on my native resolution (1920x1080). However, Baldur's Gate 2 with the widescreen mod works WONDERS on it. I installed EasyTutu with a widescreen mod and PRESTO!!! Problem solved! So basically, if BG1 doesn't work well with widescreen, use the BG2 engine lol