Laptop to TV?

Not sure if i'm posting this in the right spot but here goes. I'm trying to hook up a Gateway laptop to a Panasonic flatscreen. I used a VGA cable and managed to get my desktop picture on the screen, but nothing else from my desktop would come up. I was able to drag my curser to my TV and back to my laptop, but when i would pull up something on my laptop it wouldn't come up on the TV. Just the desktop picture stayed up on the TV. Any ideas how to fix this so i can watch movies thru my TV?? Thanks!

Charmin

 

what's the make of your video, nvidia for example. Sounds to me like you need to check out your settings; Go in to your graphics/display control panel and see what you can find as far as clone view, dual view ect, It might say something like Independent screens/display; that option is the one you want, you can have your main desktop on your laptops screen and a blank screen on your tv to watch movies on, some media players have the option to just click play on my TV some don't, in that case you just drag it over to the TV and maximize. In any case as i said it sounds like you just need to configure your settings properly.