Dual monitor (TV) problem...?

[shifted90]

Well, my cousin just called me up and told me she had a problem. She said that she connected her computer using an S-Video to the TV. It worked, but when she tried to play a video on it, the video part went black, while everything else was fine. It played perfectly on the computer monitor, but on the TV, it was just black. My friend told me to tell her that lowering the resolution would help or installing a different video player would help, but no luck. She called me, so I have no idea what the specs of her computers are except that she has a nVidia video card. Can you please help?

[PommieB]

Some Devices, TV's, DVD recorders etc have to be set to either composite or S- video, some TV's do the switching automatically, depends what type of TV you are connecting, old crt's probably wouldn't work. Checking the graphics card manual might help.

[RJ]

The problem is that graphics cards have only 1 overlay, even in 2-monitor-mode. The overlay is the part of the graphics card that is used for video displaying. So, with only 1 overlay, you see the video only on one of the screens, while on the other the video area is black.

Now I don't know the nVidia cards, but I think ATI cards have a possibility to clone the overlay, so your nVidia card might be able to do so, too.

Either that, or you have to move the overlay to the TV, then you'll get the black part instead of the video on the computer monitor.
Set the TV to be the first monitor, and your PC's monitor the second. That way you should be able to see the overlay on the TV.

RJ

[shifted90]

Thanks for the help. My cousin has no idea what I'm telling her, so I'll have to stop by tomorrow or something and fix it for her. Thanks, RJ.