Dual Display w/different resolutions/Vitrual Desktops etc.

[craigap]

This is a bit difficult for me to explain, but please bear with me as I try to paint you a picture of what I am hoping to do. Monitor 1 will be a 50" TV 1920x1080, and monitor 2 will be a small Touch Screen probably 800x600. Both will be connected to the PC in my sig. For the most part Monitor 1 will be on to watch TV through my HTPC (Sig) using SageTV. I would like the option of turning on monitor 2 at the same time to access other programs and the web while TV plays on Monitor 1. I realize this is mostly doable in extended view. However, it becomes tricky when I want to keep monitor 1 off and just turn on monitor 2 so that I can access SageTV for playing music and not have to run a power hungry 50" TV. In extended view the task bar on the bottom only gets displayed in Monitor 1. Likewise, when SageTV is windowed or in full screen it only extends the full size of Monitor 1. Therefore, I cannot see the taskbar to pull SageTV out of Sleep nor will it be able to expand into just Monitor 2. This is where I was thinking Clone view would be better. I could then have both displays showing the desktop and I could access SageTV when monitor 1 was off no problem. The trick here is to allow the ability to open a web browser or access another program while monitor 1 is on and people are watching TV on it. Normally, I would have to minimize SageTV and then pull up the web browser etc, but this would happen on both screens in Clone view, so it would interrupt TV watching. This is were I was hoping that there was a way to put a virtual desktop on monitor 2 and the main desktop on monitor 1 and be able to watch TV on Monitor 1 while browsing the web or other programs on Virtual desktop on monitor 2. Then when I wanted to have just Monitor 2 on to play music through SageTV I could just go to the real desktop on that monitor (monitor 2), and wake SageTV from sleep to do what I want to do.

One of the issues I think I'll run into is if I'm in Clone view then I might need to get another gfx card to drive the TV (I'm thinking HD4550) due to the different resolutions. I would then have the touchscreen driven by the onboard (HD3300). Would this be the case? I've been messing with dual displays using my roommates monitor and in clone view I can't change the resolution of each monitor and I need the TV at it's native, so I was hoping having a second GPU would let me change the resolution on them independently.

I'm sure reading this is difficult but, hopefully someone can understand what I'm trying to do here and provide some much needed information.

Thanks,

Craig