I'd like to contribute to this discussion.
I am experiencing this exact problem for as long as you've known about it and have been posting in this thread about it. I am running an Acer Aspire V3-771G. I have run Windows 7, Windows 8 (with ClassicShell,) Arch Linux and Ubuntu 12.04 on this machine. On all of those platforms, this issue had come up in some way or another.
globe_trotter is correct in how this situation plays out. But, along with that issue, in all the time spent on Linux installed on this machine, graphics have been strange. HDMI output is the only output recognized by linux, until you have the OS fully installed, and you can change monitor settings (changing resolutions around until the desired res. was selected was what I did.)
My main point in all this is that I have a friend with a Lenovo laptop with just HD 4000 graphics installed, and no dedicated graphics card. He can easily output to HDMI. The difference between his machine and mine is that, along with HD 4000, my laptop is equipped with NVidia Optimus graphics tech. Seems like, a machine devoid of that will not experience this issue, but, with that equipped, there are issues. Can others with the discussed problem say whether their machines have Optimus installed?
Wiki article on Optimus: Nvidia Optimus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia