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Forums -> Multiple monitors -> switch plasma on, automatically primary display
Dennis   2009-09-01 02:15
Hello,

I have a Htpc with a touchscreen and a seperate plasma. I use the Htpc and its touchscreen with Vista media center to listen to the radio etc. Also when I want to change some audio settings it's faster with the touchscreen. But when I turn on my plasma on I want to watch tv or a movie, Media Center needs to appear on the plasma and switches of at the media center.

So what I want is to use the touchscreen standard, but when I turn on the plasma windows/Media Center automatically appears at my plasma. And offcourse when I switch off my plasma, windows/media center comes back to the touchscreen.

Is this possible? (Because when I use my laptop with external screen (total different setup)and I open the laptop while working on the external screen it automatically gives a dual view with my wallpaper on the laptop screen and when I close it vice versa.)

Normally the clone mode would be the ideal situation, but Vista Media Center doesn't support that with everything.


If none of the above is possible. I assume a shortcut to toggle between the screen is the only option left?

Thanks for your reply.

Dennis
Christian Studer   2009-09-01 10:22
I'm not aware of a way to do this, what should work is setting the plasma as primary and disabling the touchscreen, this should move Media Center to the plasma. You could do this manually, or use an UltraMon display profile or the ToggleSingleMon script.

Christian Studer - www.realtimesoft.com
Andrew   2009-09-02 18:42
Hi, I am in a similar situation: I have a HTPC with nvidia 9600gt with 2 DVI outputs

One of these is connected to the touchscreen with a DVI to VGA adapter. This is screen (800x600) is always showing iMon (a full-screen program) and needs no screensaver as the iMon program works as screen-saver itself.

The second DVI is connected to a AVReceiver (yamaha rx-v3900) with a DVI to HDMI adapter. This AVReceiver is also connected to a TV by HDMI (1920x1080). This screen DOES need screen-saver

Now, the problem I have is that depending what is on and what is off, the desktop icons change their position as well as the primary monitor moves from one monitor to another:

1) If the HTPC is on and the AVReceiver is off (no matter if the TV is on or off) then the touchscreen becomes the primary (and only) monitor and all the icons move according to its resolution.

2) If I have the HTPC and the AVReceiver on but the TV off then the AVReceiver becomes the primary display (1920x1080) and touchscreen turns to secondary, but I am quite sure that icons don't keep the same position that with TV on. This situation happens a lot, when I just want to hear music and no video is needed.

3) Everything is on, then the TV is the primary screen and the touchscreen the secondary, the AVReceiver disappears as screen (which is fine and logical), but the desktop icons are not in their position.

I have tried the UltraMon demo but has not solved this problem, I don't know it it's me that I haven't configured they way I should have... Any help will be very welcome.

And one final question: why with digital interfaces turning off a monitor makes it disappear??? As far as I remember, with VGA monitors turning one on/off switched it to disabled/enabled to windows, but was still there as primary/secondary, there was no automatic primary/secondary moves from one monitor to another... Is there a way to work this way with DVI/HDMI monitors???

Thanks a lot.
Charles Logan   2009-09-02 23:21
Hi Andrew,

I almost have the same setup as you do. I have a HTPC with 800x600 Touch LCD Frontview(Imon) and a Receiver and Plasma TV screen with HDMI-connections.

I also used to have the same problem as you describe. Whenever I turned the TV off, the small Touch LCD screen became the primary monitor. It didnt only mess up the dekstop icons but also changed the resolution. VERY frustrating!

However, there is a very simple solution to this problem called "DVI Detective". It's sold by Gefen and you can find it on this link. This little genius device can copy your TV's EDID-signal and keep sending that signal to the computer. This mean that your computer will be fooled to believe that your TV always is on, even if you have turned it off. As far as I know there is no other way to do this with a software.

Another cool thing is that you can actually send both sound and picture through the DVI detective without loosing any quality. So you can simply use HDMI -> DVI cables.

Good luck!

Mr Logan
Andrew   2009-09-06 01:07
thanks a lot for the link Logan, but I think I'm not going to buy more hardware when I think it should be done by the operating system itself.

I can't understand why Microsoft doesn't allow to work with dual monitors when one is off (it's up to me if I want one monitor turned off, don't make a mess with my configuration!!!!), or why the hell is not possible to configure different screen-savers and energy savings for each monitor...

Or I would even go one step beyond: why is not allowed to have 2 (or more) cursors, one for each mouse connected to the computer, instead of all the mouses controlling the same cursor (or at least let us decide)...

Instead of these useful (and easy, or so it seems to me) innovations, they give us crap like aero.
Forums -> Multiple monitors -> switch plasma on, automatically primary display

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