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Antony Baxter 2004-09-23 22:50
Hello,
I'm new to multi monitor setups, and am having some problems setting them up exactly how I'd like them. I fear the problems are caused by limitations of the ATI Drivers and of Windows (XP, SP1), but just wanted to check if there's anything I can do.
Firstly, using ATI's Clone/Theatre mode, I can watch full screen video on my TV. That works fine. However, when not watching a video, my TV mirrors a section of my desktop from my monitor which scrolls around when I move the mouse.
I installed a demo of ShowShifter, which is a kind of Media Center app for Windows, and which ideally should be run full screen on my TV. In clone mode this isn't possible, as the TV doesn't show the full desktop, so I only see a portion of ShowShifter's Window.
Instead I switched off Clone mode and extended my desktop on to the TV. Then I could drag the ShowShifter window on to my TV, maximise it, and see the full window. Perfect! Except that no video was displayed; just a black square where the video should have been (full screen video or windowed). If I dragged the ShowShifter window back on to my monitor the video was fine.
After some googling, I've discovered that this is because the ATI drivers only allow Video Overlay on the Primary monitor. Apps like Windows Media Player that don't use hardware overlay can play video on either desktop, but they use more CPU, and anyway ShowShifter doesn't do this.
Using Windows Display properties I set my TV to be the primary display and my monitor to be my secondary display, and at last, success! ShowShifter ran full screen on my TV with video displayed properly, and low CPU usage. However, now whenever I opened another window, or tried to get display settings, or any other dialogue, they all open on the primary display, either behind the ShowShifter window where I can't find them, or in front which blocks out the video!
In an ideal world I'd like the TV in another room from my PC & Monitor, with ShowShifter always running on that display, but still be able to use my PC as normal. it seems to me that there would be two ways of doing this: either to force the ATI drivers to allow video overlay on the secondary monitor instead of the primary (this is presumably a driver issue?), or to force XP to always open new windows on the secondary display by default.
So... are there ways of doing either of these things? Either with Ultramon or another tool, or driver tweaks, or anything? I can't be the only person in the world who's wanted to do this!
Thanks for reading!
ant.
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ECarlson 2004-09-24 13:50
You could get an NVidia based card.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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