Streaming to TV

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if someone can help me with a problem I am having.

I have a Samsung LCD TV and I am trying to watch clips and movies streaming from our mac book pro. I hooked up a HDMI cable from to tv to a mac HDMI converter cable to the computer, the symbol on the computer jack reading: I0I
I changed the resolution until the desktop is in full view on the tv.

I am able to watch movies and listen to music on my hard drive.

But, when I open firefox or googlecrome it takes much longer than normal to load any page or the internet connection times out completely.

When I do get to a page to stream and click play, it just won't start loading, (It says it loading but never plays).

If I unplug the cable everything works as normal. If I preload something to stream, then plug the cable back in, I am able to stream the video.

Sometimes, I am able to hear the audio streaming from youtube but not the picture.

I have checked and updated flash player.
I tried firefox and googlecrome (to find out if there exists a clash with streaming from googlecrome's built in flash player and the computers flashplayer.; but both still experience the same problem.

I don't know what else to do, can someone please help me. I don't know that much about computers so please try not to get too technical in your explanation.

I look forward to your responses guys so I can finally fix this problem.

I had similar issues after upgrading to Mountain Lion (trying to watch the Olympics).

What I found was that my GfxCardStatus application was preventing the MacBook Pro from automatically switching its GPU (I have the 15" model with a discrete GPU). Shutting the app down corrected the problem.

If you're not using GfxCardStatus, did you also try hooking up the MacBook Pro to power (not battery) to see if the problem persists?

If you really want a no-hassle way to solve this problem permanently, go out and buy an Apple TV ($99). Done ... and wireless!

depends on your macbook pro model, only post 2011 mbp, can your apple tv with ML works, otherwise you have to use both male ends audio cable from headset jack to tv audio cable in to get the audio.

No, that's incorrect. I've used AirPlay on my 2009 MacBook Pro without issues on an Apple TV. You're right that one needs Mountain Lion if one wants to do "computer mirroring," but for straight playback of media any recent (last four years or so) Mac will do the job.