I'm driving a mini-van!! Need a VGA splitter

schapman43 · 12-09-2004, 02:37 PM

Well I've made it to the mini-van stage of my life. But the good thing is we picked up a 2003 Honda Oddysey and it has tons of room for a carputer and monitors. I plan on installing two screens, a smaller one up front and a larger one in the back so the kids can watch DVD's. Would I be better off getting a dual monitor video card or a splitter? Anyone have recommendations for a splitter?

egeekial · 12-09-2004, 02:41 PM

Dual monitor definitely... then you can do navigation/listen to music/whatever while the kids watch Spongebob. A splitter is a lot cheaper, though. They have one at the mp3car.com store.

ktritz · 12-09-2004, 05:12 PM

Just about any decent new video card can do dual monitor, I'm not sure why you think a splitter would be cheaper...

schapman43 · 12-09-2004, 05:14 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by egeekial

Dual monitor definitely... then you can do navigation/listen to music/whatever while the kids watch Spongebob. A splitter is a lot cheaper, though. They have one at the mp3car.com store.

Looks like the only way that I could use dual monitors is if I went with a micro atx motherboard platform. I wish they made a mini-ITX motherboard with dual monitor support.

egeekial · 12-09-2004, 05:20 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by schapman43

Looks like the only way that I could use dual monitors is if I went with a micro atx motherboard platform. I wish they made a mini-ITX motherboard with dual monitor support.

Don't you have a PCI slot?

schapman43 · 12-09-2004, 05:26 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by egeekial

Don't you have a PCI slot?

I havnt actually purchased the system yet. Some of the mini-ITX systems do have PCI slots. Not sure if you can over ride the on board graphics though. I'll have to look into that.

NiN^_^NiN · 12-09-2004, 05:46 PM

You can overide the onboard video either by bios or a jumper on the board.

What id like to know is how do u have audio or video playing in the back seat with the gps audio only comming from the front seat?

i wanna use 2 sound cards but i don't know how i can as i need different sounds for front and back (law in aus any video games or movies etc i the back much be used with headphones so the driver doesn't get distracted)

egeekial · 12-09-2004, 06:02 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by NiN^_^NiN

You can overide the onboard video either by bios or a jumper on the board.

What id like to know is how do u have audio or video playing in the back seat with the gps audio only comming from the front seat?

i wanna use 2 sound cards but i don't know how i can as i need different sounds for front and back (law in aus any video games or movies etc i the back much be used with headphones so the driver doesn't get distracted)

I'm interested in something like that, too. It's definitely possible with Winamp because I did it earlier with my SB Live. You just have to set Winamp to play through the rear outputs, and all the other programs will still default to the regular outputs. Does that explain it?

BrightHead · 12-09-2004, 06:04 PM

What you could do with a mini-ITX board is to get the larger monitor that has Video IN rather than VGA and then use the dual monitor feature of the mini-ITX board to send DVD/Video to the backseat and VGA to the front.

NiN^_^NiN · 12-09-2004, 06:12 PM

What iv got setup is VGA in front composite in back which has that desktop set to a program which runs on emulators on it with 2 snes pads connected.

They use the snes pad to scroll up n down the game list for every different console then push start to play it and push a small button in the centre console to exit it.

What iv done is set a old sound blaster PCI in dos and use the onboard sound for everything then use the dos emulators to use the SB card but not all emu are in dos

is there a better way than this? cause i still can't have video in the back seat???

Also both screens are 7"