Dual Monitor Question

RWB

I want to have a movie playing on my TV at the same time as playing a video game. I already have my TV plugged in, and I even watched a couple movies on it tonight, but when I play a game it seems to screw up the TV video. I see only part of the dsktop where the rest of the screen goes black.

I have it set as extended windows... but this is an ATI card and I am used to the NVidia stuff. Shouldn't I be able to set it so that videos automatically play on the secondary screen? Shouldn't I be able to CLONE the desktop and such? Or does ATi just suck at these things?

BTW My TV is plugged into the S-Video on my Laptop and it's a Mobility x700 Radeon.

leishi85

RWB wrote:

I want to have a movie playing on my TV at the same time as playing a video game. I already have my TV plugged in, and I even watched a couple movies on it tonight, but when I play a game it seems to screw up the TV video. I see only part of the dsktop where the rest of the screen goes black.

I have it set as extended windows... but this is an ATI card and I am used to the NVidia stuff. Shouldn't I be able to set it so that videos automatically play on the secondary screen? Shouldn't I be able to CLONE the desktop and such? Or does ATi just suck at these things?

BTW My TV is plugged into the S-Video on my Laptop and it's a Mobility x700 Radeon.

playing a game and watching a movie on the same system with two monitors is very taxing on your system, i would not expect the both to play very smoothly.

RWB

Won't know for sure until I try... but it's not a very taxing game anyways.

TheSmJ

As far as I know modern video cards can only put acceleration focus on one application or the other. Media Player, as well as a bunch of other video playing apps use HD acceleration to write to the screen. When focus is taken from another app which uses HD acceleration, the forcus to the first is lost and therefore it cannot write its direct-show data to the screen.