HDTV wont display media player.

[Jeff Roy]

I have my PC and HDTV connected using a DVI cable. The computer is running an nvidia 6800gt and the HDTV is a Toshiba 32HF68. I can get the HDTV to display the computers desktop, however if I play a video in media player the HDTV shows media player running, but no video. Whats going on and how do I fix it?

Thanks.

[RJ]

Hi,

you only have one overlay, even though your card is dual-heard. So one of the two is going to show the video, whereas the other one just displays a black area where the video should be.
Possibilities to solve it:

1) Make your HDTV the primary monitor (because primary monitor gets the overlay)
2) Clone the overlay (never done that, but I've read about it so it should be possible)
3) Use expanded mode and just drag media player to the HDTV, the overlay will follow.
4) Don't use overlay.

RJ

[Jeff Roy]

What is overlay exactly? Im going to google it right now, but if someone wants to answer it for me...please feel free.

[RJ]

The overlay is a piece of hardware (which is a part of the graphics chip) that writes the image of the video directly into the graphics memory to be overlaid over the windows desktop right before it's send to the monitor (usually on a black area).
Without overlay, Windows itself draws the video image on the screen.

So, Windows just displays the desktop + a black area for the video, and the overlay puts the video image right over it. For the second screen, it'll stay black as there is only one overlay and it's already used for the first screen (there seem to be possibilities to clone the overlay somehow, though.).

RJ