I'll be your mirror... or not.

March 10, 2006 12:35 AM

I've got a Windows Media Center edition PC hooked up to my television using an S-video cable so that I can play DIVX files, and I'm getting my wallpaper showing up on the television... and nothing else. The main monitor still shows all my apps, however. What gives?!

It seems to be treating the television as a second monitor, rather than mirroring exactly what's on my PC desktop, and I don't have any obvious way of either changing this, or of running and controlling my video playing software on this second display. Any advice?! I'm using a ATI Radeon X800 to do this, btw.

posted by insomnia_lj to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Can't you just drag the video window over to the second monitor? I'm on 2000 at the moment because my XP machine is in the shop. I used to run dual screens, and one of the options is to "Extend my Windows desktop onto my second monitor" or something to that effect. Uncheck it.

Other than that, I can definitely recommend a program called PowerStrip for more advanced configuration. Guide here.
posted by mr.dan at 12:42 AM on March 10, 2006

1. right click on your desktop
2. click settings tab
3. select the TV screen
4. deselect "extend my windows desktop onto this monitor"

done!
posted by b1tr0t at 12:46 AM on March 10, 2006

"1. right click on your desktop
2. click settings tab
3. select the TV screen
4. deselect "extend my windows desktop onto this monitor"

done!

Or not. I do that on the display properties screen (where it shows the primary monitor and the television as the second monitor), I select the second monitor, unclick "Extend my Windows desktop, and the second monitor turns gray and, when moused over, says "Not Active". The signal obviously goes away too, because instead of seeing my wallpaper on my television, I see no evidence of any signal at all.
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:08 AM on March 10, 2006

Also, dragging a video window to the right edge of the main computer screen makes that window appear on the second monitor/TV, but it won't play there, and I have no way of properly running it or configuring it on that screen, as my mouse is fixed to the primary display.

That said, I downloaded PowerStrip and will have a look at it. Sounds useful... thanks!
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:12 AM on March 10, 2006

I looked at PowerStrip. It's very nice, but not helpful in any obvious way in resolving this problem.
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:38 AM on March 10, 2006

Usually multi-monitor displays that contain TV/S-video output allow for setting either an "extend desktop" setting (a standard windows option for multiple screens... which is what you have set currently, it seems), or a "mirror" setting. You see this on laptops with S-video output all the time: an option to either extend, or to mirror the main monitor image to the S-Video (this allows for things like doing presentations from laptop-to-tv without having to look over your shoulder, etc).

This is what you want, so that the s-video is not a second part of the desktop with no taskbar/start menu- this is what you're seeing now which is why it's desktop wallpaper only; if you dragged an app window rightward on your screen you'd see it show up on the TV- but is instead an exact duplication of what you'd see on the monitor.

A couple of solutions:

1) set the s-video as the primary desktop, so that your TV screen is the one with the main desktop on it. If this is a media center PC, I'm assuming it's hooked up to a TV in the living room or something similar... or are you just using it as a regular PC, with a secondary TV attached? I don't understand why there would be any other 'monitor' besides the TV itself.

2) Go into the display settings, somewhere in the advanced section, and I'll be surprised if there isn't some place to note that the s-video output should mirror the main vga output, when multi-monitor support is enabled. This is probably the preferred way to solve your problem; just poke around in the driver settings/display properties, you'll find it soon enough.

posted by hincandenza at 1:42 AM on March 10, 2006

"1) set the s-video as the primary desktop"

This is an okay solution, but it means not using my desktop computer as a desktop computer, but rather tying it to my television. I was hoping for the best of both worlds, especially since I normally don't watch enough TV to justify a brand new, $1100 dedicated television video server.

"2) Go into the display settings, somewhere in the advanced section, and I'll be surprised if there isn't some place to note that the s-video output should mirror the main vga output, when multi-monitor support is enabled."

Yep. That's what I've been looking for, but haven't found the solution yet. Did a bit of Googling, and it turns out the people who design UltraMon say that there is no such solution. They offer one, which I just tried, and it's a bit choppy and costs extra for getting a non-expiring copy of the software. You also have to disable hardware acceleration just to play video using it. I hear that you can download MirrorMon, an UltraMon add-on, which supports mirroring part of the desktop. This reduces the choppiness of using MirrorMon for fullscreeen mirroring.

That said, I don't believe UltraMon's statement that there isn't a solution out there. It appears ATI offers cloning, as it is called, in their ATI Catalyst software, even if it's not featured in their control panel settings. Catalyst didn't come with my video card, but it does appear to support it and is available from their site. Will check it out and see how it works... I really don't want to have to call their customer support.
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:24 AM on March 10, 2006

It appears ATI Catalyst's cloning does the trick, albeit with the same sorts of slightly jerky issues that will have you tweaking your settings downward and taking off hardware acceleration. If it were driving just one monitor, I'm sure it wouldn't be such a big deal, and it might get considerably better once I put more than a gig of memory on this system, or if my CPU weren't an AMD Dual Core, as opposed to their highend graphic loving CPUs.

I'm going to try to suppliment things with Powerstrip, as it might help me get a bit more mileage out of the tweaks, and it is pretty powerful.
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:29 AM on March 10, 2006

Video playback often does not work very well on the 'secondary' monitor in most graphics cards...

There are 2 ways of displaying video in XP -- the video overlay Mixer (a sort of hardware Chroma keying) and Video Mixing Renderer (VMR or VMR9 -- which uses the 3d rendering functions of the graphics card).

Overlay hardly every works on secondary monitors, but some graphics cards have a system where the overlay on the primary is displayed full-screen on the secondary monitor... I think it is called 'Theater mode' on ATI cards, and you would find it in the display properties/settings/advanced, somewhere in the ATI tabs...

This will give you full-screen playback on the TV-out that you want, bit you have to use a media player that uses the overlay mixer... I am pretty sure that WMP does not by default. (ZoomPlayer allows you to select it as an option)

VMR9 may work on a secondary monitor, but performance may be poor -- you might get stuttery playback, or 'tearing' where you see 2 frames at once with a diagonal 'tear' between them.

Otherwise, as already mentioned, you need to 'clone' your primary monitor on to the secondary. This is pretty standard, and I guess if you install the Catalyst drivers, you should be able to enable clone mode...

Here is an article mentioning the video card settings for ATI cards and clone mode
posted by nielm at 5:57 AM on March 10, 2006

Check what your TV accepts on the S-Video input. You might be limited to 480p.
posted by Ferrari328 at 6:45 AM on March 10, 2006

Sometimes when you clone your display cranking down the resolution fixes the choppyness. Try setting your primary to the lowest it will let you.
posted by Mitheral at 7:40 AM on March 10, 2006

The answer seems to be:

- Enabling a cloned / mirrored monitor (in this case, using ATI Catalyst)
- Cranking down the resolution to 640x480
- Setting color quality to 16-bit medium
- Adjusting hardware acceleration down until video is viewable on the television.

If you don't turn off hardware acceleration, you're likely to get a black video screen on your cloned television. Turning it off entirely will work, but I have discovered that you can turn it up a bit and have video play to the television, so presumably there are some aspects of hardware acceleration that are perfectly fine for video on a cloned monitor, which will noticeably boost your performance and lower jerkiness.

Also, my system only came with a gig of RAM. Increasing the RAM should help a bit too.

As for the picture, my wife says it's better than our TV reception, though not quite as good as DVD. Performance is even better for anime, which is primarily what we'll be using it for anyway.

Thanks everyone. Now I'm gonna love me some fansubs!
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:15 PM on March 10, 2006

All the DVD player software I've ever seen has two windows: a big one that the movie shows in, and a little one shaped like some cheesy simulacrum of a car stereo where all the controls are.

To get the movie playing on the second screen, make sure the "extend desktop" feature is turned ON and fully working (restart Windows if you can't move the mouse pointer onto the second screen after turning this on), drag the big window over there and click its Maximize button. Most video players will respond to Maximize on the secondary screen by going to full-screen mode on that screen. The controls (car-stereo-like) window will still be on the main screen, and you can use it to control the player.

If each screen has its own separate picture and you're not doing clever cloning things, you should be able to run with full hardware acceleration and everything should Just Work.
posted by flabdablet at 3:00 AM on March 13, 2006