9600 pro, dual monitor, no DVD output on 2nd screen....

  • Thread starter Thread starter lee jackson
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L

lee jackson

Just got a couple of nice 18.1" LCDs
(http://www.dabs.com/uk/productView.htm?quicklinx=2BD6 - absolute
bargin in terms of price to "performance). These are running off a
9600 pro, 1 off DVI the other off VGA.

Got both working without major issues - have a nice little 2560x1024
desktop (extended) with both Linux and Windows. However my 1 annoying
niggle is DVDs will only play on the primary display. If I extend them
onto the secondary I just get a dark area where the playback should
be. Ive swapped the primarys around and I can get playback on either
the digial or analogue screens depending on which is the primary. Also
unless I run apps such as xscreensaver or UT2004 windowed this also
defalts to using the primary.

Is there anyway around this behavior in windows and/or Linux? Is this
a known driver issue?

Any pointers appreciated.
Lee
 
Basically (least under Windows) it's just the way it works and has something
to do with "hardware overlay". If you can get a dvd player that uses
"software only" they don't care but offhand I don't think there is one.
Comment is based upon fact same occurs just playing avi files etc. (some
players user hardware overlay, some don't) so suspect problem is common to
both.

It takes "special" drivers to circumvent it, e.g. I've read Matrox's new 3
head job has "something" in it's drivers but unless someone wants to send me
one :) I have no idea how it works.

Perhaps you've also noticed by now that most OpenGl games require only the
primary is even active? Another irritation.
 
Yup, it looks like ATI's drivers dont support hardware accelleration
to both DVI/VGA simultaniously - but after a little playing about I
found it is possible to do DVD playback.

On windows I disabled hardware acceleration (down to 1 or 2 notches)
and in combination with powerDVD 5 was able to do dual screen DVD
playback.

On Linux under xine, using the xshm video driver and running xine -F
achieved the same results.

Now all I need is a good hacksaw to shave the 1cm border off the right
and left sides of the monitor cases *grin*
 
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