Question Author
as a followup to the last reply, i decided just to undo the cable and see what happened and hope that it would work. it did, eventually. when i plugged the cable into the laptop, nothing happened, but when i plugged the cable into the tv as well, the tv automatically became the default audio. then there was no picture, but after taking the cable out, and putting it back again - into the tv, got both sound and picture. have not yet figured out to disable to picture from the computer screen. the picture on the tv is not the full screen on the tv, although it is full screen on the laptop. still - much better than trying to watch things on the computer, and at least the connection between the two works so i wont have to take the cable back