Windows Media Player on TV & VGA

ryanerb · 07-11-2003, 04:08 AM

I have a shuttle sn41g2 and it has a s-video out and a vga out. I can see the desktop on both displays at the same time, but when i play a movie in windows media player, the movie is only played on the VGA and not on the TV. on the TV a black box appears where the movie should be. when i go into properties, i can set either one as the "primary display" and whichever one is the primary display, the video will appear on that one, but not the other. how can i get the video to work on both? -Ryan

bjm2020 · 07-11-2003, 09:53 AM

I have the same problem with my GeForce 4 card with tv out on my main pc at home. If you find a solution be sure to post.

Machs_FueL · 07-11-2003, 10:23 AM

i had the same problem last week, i ****ed with the switches in the nVidia control panel and now any time i play a vid in media player it always full screens on the TV (pretty Sweet i think)

i'm using win2k, a GF4, and media player 6.4

when i get home this afternoon i'll check out my setting and see if i can help out

Machs_FueL · 07-11-2003, 10:24 AM

i had the same problem last week, i ****ed with the switches in the nVidia control panel and now any time i play a vid in media player it always full screens on the TV (pretty Sweet i think)

i'm using win2k, a GF4, and media player 6.4

ryanerb · 07-11-2003, 11:45 AM

sweet.... sounds good!

osirisdon · 07-11-2003, 12:56 PM

IT also has to do with refresh rate. That happened to me long time ago.

What I did was I set my monitor refresh rate to 85Hz then I lost everything from my TV out. Then I reverted back to 60Hz all of a sudden my TV out started working again.

Dunno dont ask.

BTW this happened on a G-Force 3

AVGeek · 07-11-2003, 05:41 PM

You guys are all touching on symptoms and band aids, but not the underlying problem. It actually has to do with memory. The video card has a fixed amount of memory, and it has to split the resources when running multiple displays. Usually, video clips are memory hogs, so it can only play in one place at a time. Also, as resolution or refresh rate goes up, so does the amount of memory necessary. This is why changing the refresh rate affected your playback osirisdon. I have to deal with this issue all the time at work.

Most of the time, having it play in only one location (the external display) is acceptable. If you want it in both places, try dropping your resolution all the way down to 640x480. If it still won't play, it definitely does not have enough video memory. You would need to add another video card, or use an external scan converter (looping through to the VGA monitor).

Machs_FueL · 07-11-2003, 05:57 PM

well here is my nVidia setup, i hope this helps... i don't see anything to obvious ...

my other thought was maybe directX 9?

and i use winDVD4 which is set up to display full screen on TV out

Machs_FueL · 07-11-2003, 05:58 PM

4

Machs_FueL · 07-11-2003, 05:59 PM

3

Moose · 07-12-2003, 02:34 AM

From what I understood this has to do with the cards DAC (digital analog converter) setup and not the cards amount of memory (memory affecting available resolution/refresh combinations). Your card has to have dual DAC's to produce two accelerated displays. So if you want to run a video overlay or a 3D program it will only show on one display if you don't have the two DAC's. All the new NVidia's have dual, but before that it was hit and miss. It is on the GF2MX, but not GF2 or GF3. It is on all the GF 4's. So you will want to check the cards options, but most integrated cards have a single DAC.
You may simply want to try turning off your hardware's video overlay. Yes this makes video decoding/display take more CPU, but it should let you see the video on both screens at once and shouldn't be an issue if you have a little CPU to spare.

Here's someone's tutorial on disabling video overlays in the apps.
http://blog.beebware.co.uk/archives/000263.html
Good luck.

babas151 · 07-29-2003, 01:34 PM

i had the same problem with my laptops tv out and lcd what i dis is either pick the tv or vga dont be using both at the same time