Ben 2005-08-01 22:18
I've been avidly reading hundreds (literally!) of threads here and on other fora regarding displaying video on two displays simultaneously and i'm stumped!
Am I right in thinking that you can't display a dvd or tv tuner in one monitor and simultaneously display a video file from the hard drive,for example, in the other?
cheers
Ben
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Tantalus 2005-08-02 01:46
>>Am I right in thinking that you can't display a dvd or tv tuner in one monitor and simultaneously display a video file from the hard drive,for example, in the other?
it is possible to do both - i can watch a dvd movie on screen #2 and watch a windows media file playing on screen #1 (both full-screen or windowed). the limiting factors is the hardware overlay and (to a much lesser extent) the media players you are using.
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Ben 2005-08-02 09:01
what do you mean by the hardware overlay limitations... is this what the graphics card uses to display the image?
It is great news if i can watch video and tv at the same time.
thanks :-)
Ben
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Tantalus 2005-08-02 13:22
there are two ways in which motion video is displayed to screen: hardware overlay and software rendering (video overlay). the advantage of using the hardware overlay is that it imposes less cpu overhead since some of the work is offloaded to the video card.
depending on the video card (even though the card may have two outputs and support dual displays, you may only have one hardware overlay present. this poses a problem then because certain media players won't work because hardware overlay is not available for that display or certain display modes may not be available because of it.
for example, windows media player will run as a windowed app on any screen in a multi-dplay system. however, if you maximize it to full screen, the output is only visible on the display which is designated as Primary.
for explanation's sake, i'm calling any display that is not the primary to be considered as a secondary display. in a 3 display configuration, you have two secondary displays...a 4 display system would have 3 secondaries.
powerdvd (at least up to v6) has problems running (as both full-screen and windowed) on any secondary displays when multiple video cards are installed in the system. windvd platinum on the other hand is a tad bit more well-behaved. it will allow you to watch movies full-screen on any secondary display, but has problems running in windowed mode on some secondary displays, again when multiple cards are installed.
you will have to mix and match both the hardware and software to your own display setup, working around whatever limitations there are. (see the earlier note about WMP and the primary when in full-screen mode). fyi, there are other media players besides WMP that have better multi-monitor support which you may want to try out.
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Ben 2005-08-03 19:23
thank you for such a detailed reply! that is exactly what i needed to hear :-)
now i can have fun fiddling with different players.
thanks again tantalus
ben
Ben
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JuMz 2005-08-12 07:47
Is it possible to watch 1 movies on BOTH SCREENS?
Jameel
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Ben 2005-08-13 08:45
isn't that the clone mode?
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Tantalus 2005-08-13 15:20
ultramon mirroring won't work...you wont see the movie playback on the mirrored screen.
cloning support might work if it is natively supported by the video driver and would probably require dual hardware overlays.
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