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I'm trying to display my phone's screen on a monitor. Landscape works correctly but when I flip to portrait the screen fills a small portion in the middle of the screen instead of changing orientation. I plan to turn the monitor sideways to display the device screen and lock it in portrait. Has anyone come up with a way to change the orientation? I'm using the netgear ptv3000. I'm considering purchasing the allsharecast hub, but I'm not certain that will work either. Thanks!!

current portrait layout

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I believe that this is the way graphics are outputted and cannot be changed (it is the same with iPad's and their output connector) – Liam W Dec 14 '12 at 17:27

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I am sorry to have to tell you this, but this is not possible.

The OS outputs the data to the screen, and the screen follows this. When the device is in portrait mode, that is what the device outputs - as the screen has wide space, it fills it with black bars.

This is the same for the iPad's (I know, I hate them as well) with their screen connectors - if the iPad is in portrait mode, then the screen sits in the middle of the screen.

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If it is on the OS side, then it is something that can fixed with software, possibly requiring a custom firmware which does make it possible. – plackemacher Dec 17 '12 at 15:27
@plackemacher True, but I dont really think the OP wants to build thenselves a custom ROM ;) – Liam W Dec 17 '12 at 15:33
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I am the OP's friend. We may be considering such a thing as we want to demonstrate an app at a trade show and our only other option at the moment is to buy a 60"+ TV which we cannot afford. – plackemacher Dec 17 '12 at 15:39
I don't believe there is an easy solution out there, but there has to be some possible way to do this – Jake Molzahn Dec 17 '12 at 15:53
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Think about it, if you were to stretch that screen on the handset when and only if, plugged into the TV set, it would look hacky and awful at worst!

Reasons include:

  • Would chew up a lot of memory to allow translation on the fly to accomodate the width of Android's graphics frame-buffer device - which is a limited size based on the resolution of the handset and only one framebuffer is available!
  • An extra layer of complexity to tell Android "Right, we're plugged into TV, now stretch"
  • As RAM is chewed up to "accomodate" a bigger buffer to hold the graphics in a stretched state for desktop screen/TV, that could result in Android slowing down to a crawl as the apps would not have enough RAM available to run in.

All in all, it may be do-able, but having to reserve memory for the "stretched" resolution, say, for example, 800x480 resolution, Portrait mode on WVGA, 480x800, Landscape mode, 800x480, using that one singular frame-buffer device.

Have a mosey around in the kernel configuration as there may be something in there for Media/TV capture...? as for the actual app within Android itself, have not seen it. Worthy a investigation into the kernel though :)

But then again, if there's a chip that supports HDMI, maybe its a different story, but interesting question OP! +1 from me!

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